(no subject)
Apr. 22nd, 2004 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlockSo while answering a constituent letter from the Senator's office where I intern regarding Senate Bill 1503 (which would deny a person without lawful immigration status but having lived in teh state several years eligibility for exemption from paying nonresident tuition at the California Community Colleges and the California State University; my Senator voted against it), I looked up the website of the bill's author, Senator Tom McClintock. It took me a few minutes, but it finally clicked that this is the same Tom McClintock that was one of the candidates for the recall election for California's governor. Apparently he also ran for State Controller (signs the checks) at one time and lost that too. Uber-conservative. Randomly, I clicked a link on his site and came across this speech.
Comments in italics are my own.
Why the Pledge of Allegiance Matters
" The existence of these rights is beyond debate – “self-evident” in the words of the Founders. And their source is supreme - “the Creator.” “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…” "
...
"But how do we secure these rights in a world where others seek to violate them? We form a government servient to these God-given rights – or more precisely, a government under God. “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…” In the American view, the only legitimate exercise of force by one individual over another, or by a government over its people, is in the defense of these natural rights."
What the heck? Since when is defending our natural rights an act done under God for God? I don't see anything about that in the Constitution. Furthermore, that quote says "endowed by their Creator", not "endowed by the One Christian Creator".
"This concept is the foundation of American liberty. And because it defines limits to the powers of government, it is supremely offensive to the radicals of the left. They abhor the words “under God” because these words stand in the way of an all-powerful state."
I always find the words "all-powerful state" to be extremely funny come from conservatives. As if they honestly believe that dictating what happens in our bedrooms and investigating what books we read and holding secret trials are not the actions of people who want an "all-powerful state."
This is the best one...
"The French and American revolutions were waged on precisely the same declared rights of liberty and equality. One was a ghastly failure that ended in the reign of terror; the other, a magnificent success. Why?
In the philosophy of the French Revolution, the rights of man were defined by a governmental committee and extended at the sufferance of that government. In the American view, these rights come from God, their existence is preeminent and their preservation is the principal object of government."
So we won because we stated that our rights came from God and they didn't. I'm sorry, but that seems to me like a rather simplistic explanation for the failure of the French Revolution. It is also, ironically, ignoring the fact that the French aided the American Revolution. A lot.
Overall this speech seems to take words and events and twist them around signficantly. It latches onto the idea that human rights are natural and inseparable from people and that they are endowed by whichever deity or creation source you happen to believe, turns that into an argument for a nation that's supportive and in-debt to God, and in fact our revolution only succeeded because we're a god-abiding nation... and then totally fails to mention the fact that Founders were extremely secular and thought that God (any) should be kept as far away from a connection to government as possible.
Well, at least I can say that the speech was very well-worded. He's eloquent. Too bad he's not much else. And though I think Swarzenegger's a mistake and continues to be so, I suppose he's better than this guy.
Comments in italics are my own.
Why the Pledge of Allegiance Matters
" The existence of these rights is beyond debate – “self-evident” in the words of the Founders. And their source is supreme - “the Creator.” “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…” "
...
"But how do we secure these rights in a world where others seek to violate them? We form a government servient to these God-given rights – or more precisely, a government under God. “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…” In the American view, the only legitimate exercise of force by one individual over another, or by a government over its people, is in the defense of these natural rights."
What the heck? Since when is defending our natural rights an act done under God for God? I don't see anything about that in the Constitution. Furthermore, that quote says "endowed by their Creator", not "endowed by the One Christian Creator".
"This concept is the foundation of American liberty. And because it defines limits to the powers of government, it is supremely offensive to the radicals of the left. They abhor the words “under God” because these words stand in the way of an all-powerful state."
I always find the words "all-powerful state" to be extremely funny come from conservatives. As if they honestly believe that dictating what happens in our bedrooms and investigating what books we read and holding secret trials are not the actions of people who want an "all-powerful state."
This is the best one...
"The French and American revolutions were waged on precisely the same declared rights of liberty and equality. One was a ghastly failure that ended in the reign of terror; the other, a magnificent success. Why?
In the philosophy of the French Revolution, the rights of man were defined by a governmental committee and extended at the sufferance of that government. In the American view, these rights come from God, their existence is preeminent and their preservation is the principal object of government."
So we won because we stated that our rights came from God and they didn't. I'm sorry, but that seems to me like a rather simplistic explanation for the failure of the French Revolution. It is also, ironically, ignoring the fact that the French aided the American Revolution. A lot.
Overall this speech seems to take words and events and twist them around signficantly. It latches onto the idea that human rights are natural and inseparable from people and that they are endowed by whichever deity or creation source you happen to believe, turns that into an argument for a nation that's supportive and in-debt to God, and in fact our revolution only succeeded because we're a god-abiding nation... and then totally fails to mention the fact that Founders were extremely secular and thought that God (any) should be kept as far away from a connection to government as possible.
Well, at least I can say that the speech was very well-worded. He's eloquent. Too bad he's not much else. And though I think Swarzenegger's a mistake and continues to be so, I suppose he's better than this guy.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-23 02:39 am (UTC)see now I always imagined that after fighting off us pushy english you'd restrain yourselves from that whole religous persecution thing.
Another of my cherished myths of the new world destroyed!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-23 08:54 am (UTC)Another of my cherished myths of the new world destroyed!
The problems with that cherished myth is that it assumes all communitys in early colonial and post-revolutionary US were the same like they pretty much are now. They weren't, hence the separate states.
Interesting fact-- more people registered to vote register themselves as independants than as Democrat of Republican. And more people register as Demoncrat than as Republican. So if every person registered as an independant went to vote one day and didn't vote for the republican or democrat candidate, we could have a president that didn't come from either major party.
But that never seems to happen.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-24 10:28 am (UTC)But hey, myths don't have to be true!
That independent thing is true here as well, in as much as if everyone who thought Liberal (as in liberal democrat party) voted for them, they'd wn every time.
Sad there always seen as a wasted vote...
no subject
Date: 2004-04-23 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-24 10:29 am (UTC)You should have let me get away with thinking you sevred a higher power!