Discouraging is the word that immediately came to mind – do these Know-Nothings actually know what is in the US Constitution? Or has pop culture, a skin-deep only knowledge of civics, and our failing educational system (and its corresponding curriculum turn away from teaching our history to the next generations) finally given us nincompoops? Did the movement started by the SDS, whose members then went underground into our educational system, finally win the Cold War? And have traditional American values and footings been scoured away?
Watching this, how can one think otherwise?
My only question: condoms, syringes, Internet, cars, jobs – all these (and I would hazard to guess, even more) things should be provided to these walking vacuum jars for free. I only wish that a follow on question had been asked:
Who do you really think is paying for all this, and is it far that you can demand and take from them so you can have this ‘free’ stuff?
The short answer is that they believe the Government should – never realizing that for them to receive something, it must first be taken from somebody else. For their “Freedom from Need”, someone must be “enslaved” and involuntarily give of their private property and their time: we have no Star Trek replicators as of yet. This is Selfishness to the extreme: “You must work for me to give me what I believe I should have” – the hallmark of Socialism and the hallmark when everything is decided by politics (or, snarkily sneered: when everything thing has to be “democratically decided”, as the Occupy Wall Street movement held, and Socialists / Communists held before them – nothing more than a thinly veiled euphemism of “Government decides all”). And where did they get this?
The Uber-Progressive FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, which these incremental socialists have been working to implement for over 100 years (and which will destroy the Constitution and the traditional relationship of Government and Sovereign Citizens):
- The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
- The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
- The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
- The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
- The right of every family to a decent home;
- The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
- The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
- The right to a good education.
From an older post of mine, there is this that explains the difference of the “New Freedom” that the above speaks to (“I must be provided for”) versus the traditional value of the Founders’ Freedom:
Bruce Walker over at American Thinker put it well:
How can liberty be anything other than negative? Liberty is the absence of external control. Only in our age of collective thinking and untidy language could such a thing as “positive liberty” be conceived. The state power to coerce is not liberty.
And this is what Progressives have wanted us to ignore for a century – as their “Freedom” is bifurcated; half become free from the necessities of life (“gimme”) and half are forced “to serve” the others (the providers). This is a complete distortion of the word and notion of what true freedom is, as Government cannot “grant” freedom to some and take it from others; it can, as the Framers rightly knew, that Government either takes it, or protects it. It is an either / or, a binary situation – not a “fuzzy logic” continuum whereby freedom ends up as Government “it means what I say it means – and only for this moment because I can (and will) change my mind in the future”.
Words have meanings – and Progressives have been trying to “Orwell” those meanings for years (simply because they can’t be truthful and use the words we all know in the ways that are commonly accepted. Here are the real definitions:
As Grokster Susan pointed out (she beat me to it!), Obama had the temerity to say:
““Quality, affordable care is not some earned privilege – it’s a right
No, it has never been nor should a Right be ever be defined as something that is simply given or afforded to someone:
- Right – an attribute associated to someone simply for being a human; in the US, our Rights are enumerated in the Constitution (mostly).
- Earned Privilege – status obtained through work or via meritocrisy; not something that accrues simply for the act of being alive
- Entitlement – a government program providing benefits to members of a specified group; also : funds supporting or distributed by such a program
We as Conservatives and Constitutionalists MUST DEMAND that in any argument with Progressives (or those suffering from a Government School education) “here are the definitions” and make sure that they are followed. Remember, most of their argument DEPENDS on changing the definition.
And I will throw this in as a bonus reading.
(H/T: Campus Reform via The Blaze)
