QotD

[digitaldiscipline]

One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our foundingfathers used in the great struggle for independence.

-Charles A. Beard

O RLY?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are creat edequal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, itis the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizingits powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, andto provide new Guards for their future security.

YA. RLY.

Comments

[david-deacon.livejournal.com]

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for . . . "

--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia

Most of Jefferson's stuff will get you removed from the venue of a GWB appearance and herded into an Orwellian "free speech zone."