Wednesday, February 25, 2015

GOP rewrites history: Past time for REAL HISTORY and SCIENCE to save our Constitutional Rights.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/why-right-wing-obsessed-brainwashing-your-kid-stealing-your-social-security?akid=12825.294211.qLpD7F&rd=1&src=newsletter1032384&t=3

Thomas Jefferson, however, foreseeing a time when the concepts fundamental to the founding of America were forgotten, strongly argued that the Constitution must contain at least a rudimentary statement of rights, laying out those main areas where government could, at the minimum, never intrude into our lives.
Jefferson's insistence on a bill of rights exemplifies the progressive thoughts and actions that fill our rich history, and provide a perfect example of why education is vital to our democratic republic.
Jefferson was in France when Madison sent him the first draft of the new Constitution, and he wrote back on December 20, 1787, that, “I will now tell you what I do not like [about the new constitution]. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land....”
There had already been discussion among the delegates to the constitutional convention about whether they should go to the trouble of enumerating the human rights they had held up to the world with the Declaration of Independence, but the consensus had been that it was unnecessary.
The Declaration, the writings of many of the Founders and Framers, and no shortage of other documents made amply clear the Founders’ and the Framers’ sentiments that human rights were solely the province of humans, and that governments don’t grant rights but, rather, that in a constitutionally limited democratic republic We, The People—the holders of the rights—grant to our governments whatever privileges our government may need to function (while keeping the rights for ourselves).



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