Posts Tagged ‘Declaration of Independence’

Tripoli falls, Americans and free people everywhere rejoice

August 21, 2011

Government ethics 101:

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 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 to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

These words of Thomas Jefferson are the core principle of government. Perhaps nothing defines being American so much as a belief in these three sentences. So every American must be joyful at the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The bloodbath that the evil dictator promised hasn’t occurred. His troops defending his capital seem to have melted away as the rebel army drove, almost anti-climactically, into Tripoli.

What comes next no one can say. The people who united to oppose the dictator soon will have nothing so powerful to unite them. Qaddafi claimed—like Mubarak before him—that he (more…)

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Americans should wholeheartedly support the Egyptian anti-Mubarak demonstrators

February 5, 2011

 

The videos from Cairo show happy peaceful demonstrators by the tens of thousands, interspersed with videos of Mubarak supporters battling the demonstrators in a chaotic scene. When the action dies down the TV talking heads ruminate over what outcome would be best for America. Or as Joe Scarborough put it, “Who is behind Door #2?”

Jack Marshall explains in his Ethics Alarms blog why Americans should be uncompromisingly for Egyptian freedom from the Mubarak dictatorship. Simply stated, America’s very meaning is about the rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t assert these rights for Americans, it asserts them for all men.

So what’s best for America is an Egyptian government by the people. Whether that government follows the superficially pro-American policies of Mubarak is irrelevant. The Declaration of Independence is what’s relevant. That’s why all Americans should cheer the demonstrations.

 

Newt Gingrich maligns American Muslims, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, and the mosque “at” Ground Zero

July 29, 2010

I got my weekly email yesterday from Newt Gingrich headed “No Mosque at Ground Zero.” It was quite scary—a 1500-word letter exposing Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf as “an apologist for Sharia supremacy” who “actually compared Sharia law with the Declaration of Independence, and who is spreading “moral confusion about the nature of radical Islamism.”

Newt leads up to this indictment of Rauf by warning us that “radical Islamists” are trying to impose Sharia law in parts of America, “no matter how deeply [it conflicts with] the democratic values undergirding our constitutional system.”

He then leads us through horrors like honor killings of family members, spousal torture and rape, and even threats against a disabled student with a [unclean] guide dog—all permitted by Newt’s version of Sharia.

Then Newt reveals the true intentions of Imam Rauf: to disarm America in the fight against “radical Islamism.”

Except it’s all a lie. Here’s what Rauf wrote recently on the subject of Sharia. It’s not about beheadings and amputations as a form of justice, or about women being stoned or forced into hiding behind burkas. Those things are not Shariah, but rather part of the penal codes in countries that deny fairness and justice, according to Rauf.

The mosque issue isn’t about defending American values against “radical Islamism,” like Newt says. It’s about defending American values against blind prejudice, like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence say.

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