Showing posts with label Muhammed's Radio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muhammed's Radio. Show all posts

Monday, July 06, 2015

Glenn Reynolds: Revolutionary?

GHR claims that if the Declaration of Independence gave sufficient, persuasive reasons for rebellion in 1776, those claims still work....now.

Excerpt:
Does our government now have, as its principal function, the protection of people's rights? Or is it more of a giant wealth-transfer machine, benefiting the connected at the expense of the outsiders? And, most important, does our government enjoy the consent of the governed? (According to a 2014 Rasmussen poll, only 21% think so.) What would the drafters of the declaration say?

So is a new American Revolution in order? As our Founding Fathers knew, revolutions are chancy things and often make things worse. And as the declaration itself notes, "All experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." 
I have to admit that I found myself thinking along these lines when NPR did its perfunctory "reading of the Declaration."  They had all the talking voice-boxes take a turn.  And pretty much exactly none of them actually believed what they were reading.  Their conception of the state is pure Rousseau, and coercive "social contract" with no pretense of actual consent. 

The irony of having them read it every year is delightful...and painful.
 
ATSRTWT for the Reynolds piece

Tuesday, February 28, 2012