LET'S TRY THIS ONE MORE TIME - DEFINING "RIGHTS" UNDER THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
That sentence is not about Constitutional guarantees, nor are they even Constitutional issues. They were a Jeffersonian philosophy defining the main issues that fomented the American Revolution, and he put them to paper in the Declaration of Independence.

Looking at that sentence logically, we know immediately that all men are not created equal in neither the physical, intellectual nor emotional sense. Jefferson was talking about the equality of their God given rights! And it's not just "men" who have these rights, women have them as well. "Men" was the predominant term in the 1700's because women had few officially sanctioned and supported rights at that time. In fact, in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified proclaiming that all citizens were granted the protections of the Constitution against unjust state laws. This Amendment was also the first to define "citizens" and "voters" as "male." It wasn't until 1920 that women were granted the right to vote in the United States, after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

The "right to Life" should be obvious, inasmuch as we have laws prohibiting the unlawful taking of a human life. The only discussion now appears to be one of establishing beyond any question precisely when "life" begins. That's a subject for an entirely different blog.

The "right to Liberty" would insure our ability to come and go freely. We should remain unrestrained and unmolested in our travels within the United States, and need not request permission from anyone to move freely from point to point within those borders. This right, and all the others, are guaranteed by the Articles of our Constitution!

Which takes me to the "right to the pursuit of Happiness". Evidently this one is a bit difficult for some people to grasp. It is not a right to always be happy, and to think so would be an indication of mental deficiency. The English dictionary defines "pursuit" thus:
transitive verb
1 : to follow in order to overtake, capture, kill, or defeat
2 : to find or employ measures to obtain or accomplish : seek
The implication here is that one must take action, or chase after a thing to be pursuing it. We do that through personal effort, using whatever physical, mental or emotional skills and talents with which we were blessed and/or developed. Pursue does not mean we sit on our butt and wait for happiness to come wandering by so we can grab a handful. It means that you have a right, through you own efforts, to chase after those things which you feel will bring you "happiness". You do not have a right to take from someone else without just compensation, nor do you have the right to take rewards from the taxed labors of others. When the ants tire of supporting the grasshopper, the grasshopper will eaten by them. And, as William Shakespeare wrote, "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much; such men are dangerous."

Fortune Favors the Strong in Negotiations - Personal and International

If there is only one lesson to be learned from history, it is this: those who try to negotiate from a position of weakness are - generally - the less successful of the parties involved. Those in the stronger position always determine the outcome... one way or the other.

The apologetic, radically leftist President of the United States has, in his first 100 days, traveled the globe apologizing for our country, and osculating upon the derrieres of his anti-American pals! He has also labeled those who may disagree with his radical left-wing agenda as "radical right-wing extremists" - a label which I am proud to wear!

Those of us who are gravely concerned about the direction in which Mr. Obama is taking our country seem to have an understanding that he and his political cronies/advisers lack:
We cannot negotiate successfully from a position of weakness.
a. Obama has weakened us by
(1) declassifying, and releasing, Top Secret documents from the files of the CIA. An agency whose charter responsibility is to gather information from around the world that is considered vital to the security of the free world.
(2) restricting our intelligence gathering people to specific, non-threatening behaviors when interrogating captured enemy combatants ... and PUBLICIZING the fact!
(3) delivering an embarrassing performance during a State visit to the United Kingdom by laying hands upon Queen Elizabeth's person - which she was gracious enough to ignore.
(4) compounding that error by accepting from Hugo Chavez, de facto dictator of Venezuela, the virulently anti-American/anti-Western book, "The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent," by Eduardo Galeano, which Obama was naive enough to smilingly accept. Chavez probably could have gotten the same ignorant "ain't got a clue" response from Obama if he had presented him with a copy of Mein Kampf!
(5) making feeble, half-hearted attempts at correcting the financial distress in which the USA - and most of the world - now find themselves. Essentially nationalizing several large corporations and banks through the "bailout" process, and taking one more step toward creating the socialist state he desires from the United States of America.
b. Obama also desires to reduce our standing army and creat something that resembles the Hitler Youth Corps, or Mao Tse Tung's Red Brigades, thereby making us more vulnerable from the outside and less secure on the inside of our borders.
I could go on about his for some time, but I tire of this exercise, as it makes my soul weary.

Is it entirely the fault of the left-wing entitlement whores? No, it most definitely is not. Conservatives in this country have been the backbone of that which has been called "the silent majority", and we have been far too silent for far too long! Here's a quote from a man who saw our situation quite clearly - more than 200 years ago:

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." —John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)

What is costing us so dearly now, is our own complacency, and, in this case, to be complacent is to be complicit! In the words of that great philosopher, Pogo Possum, "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo, 1971

We have failed to exercise that "eternal vigilance", and that which we value so highly - our Constitutional Rights - is about to be taken from us by The Great Usurper. The left cannot allow themselves to admit to what is happening because it would require them to admit that they were taken in - duped by The Great Usurper!

I could be wrong about this... but it's highly doubtful!