The folks at Hot Air are taking Markos “Kos” Moultisas to task for his ahistoric perspective on Rick Santorum and the source of rights. He apparently believes that our rights are created by our government and that "God" isn't mentioned in the Constitution.
The founding fathers clearly believed that rights existed before any government existed and that they...and we...were creating a government to defend those rights.
This is the underlying weakness among many on the left. They worship government power and believe that the government is therefore omnipotent. The land of milk and honey was created by government fiat!
What many on the left fail to recognize is that individual rights supercede (or should) governmental whims. That is why we have a First Amendment to acknowledge our right to protest the government. Our rights exist despite the best efforts of government, not because of it. Our Constitution exists to restrict government exercise of authority, not to give it ever greater control over our lives.
2 comments:
Believe it or not, I don't have a problem with your fundamental points here... but I have a little bit of a problem with some of the rhetoric, especially in the third paragraph. None of the lefties I hang with "worship" government (in fact, we cut our political teeth doing just about the opposite during a powerful Democratic administration), nor do we think government is or should be anyplace close to "omnipotent."
Where we part ways is and always has been how much government should do for the common good and how that should be balanced against giving it too much power. That's a big enough disagreement that we don't really need words like "worship" and "omnipotent" in our arguments.
Other than that, I'm with you, sir.
That's a fair criticism, Sherwood.
"Worship" and "omnipotent" are certainly a little bit much.
I do try to use qualifiers like "many" instead of "all" or "most" precisely because I do know that there are many on the left that are less than hopeful for a world ordered by governmental fiat.
Regards,
Dann
Post a Comment