“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
I mean sure, rules are rules,
and there are few rules we hold higher than those contained in our
Constitution. We’ve proven over and over that the Constitution is worth dying
for, but how closely do we hold the ideals it protects? Are they worth living
for?
Living -- yeah -- I like that part, and that's why our founding documents are so important.
The Constitution is the law of the land, and it is founded upon The Declaration of Independence, the expression of our ideals, the higher law we have set for ourselves.
I submit to you that any deed, practice, or law that detracts from the realization of those ideals is worse than breaking the rules. When we do that, we continue to break the promises We the People made to ourselves.
What we need to admit is that the American ideal is not the fact of the matter. Our Founding Fathers were painfully aware that they themselves could never live up to the words, but they had to believe that one day theUnited
States would find a way.
Why else would they end the Declaration with this clause: “…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”? We still have the actual piece of paper; the one we literally carried, in pockets and satchels, throughout the war it started.
Ideal, what a word.
We can talk about “having” ideals, but that’s one of those deceptive idioms that color the American language. “Having ideals” is like having dreams and goals, because by definition ideals are to be striven for, not tucked into a pocket and taken to the bank.
“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
Yeah...about that...we still can’t quite decide what ideal equality looks likes yet, but we do know what it doesn’t look like. It doesn’t look like a snowflake SJW slashing a dude’s tires because he’s a blue-collar working man; and it certainly doesn’t look like punk-ass white boy terrorists driving a car into a crowd of their fellow humans.
They both suck; their actions and lack of compassion are nasty symptoms of infection.
They ooze out of our self inflicted scar.
Not talking about slavery. Slavery is neither the scar nor the infection; it was the knife. An ugly living thing made of flesh and blood and bone. Organic and malignant.
Who stabbed us with it?
You just thought “white men,” I know I did, but I was wrong. Who’s going to tell me that her heart can’t be as calloused as his, or that he can't be as compassionate as she?
I have to say: the knife was wielded by the very white Christian men and women trying to rise above European Christendom and European government.
But back to the knife.
It was brought over in 1492, and it wasn’t always a knife; it was a living tool. For three hundred years it grew, it learned, it evolved, and it did all the other things "intelligent life" does.
We ratified the Constitution anyway.
We were conceived with this hateful tool already in our hand, and had even begun to carve ourselves up with it. The Founding Fathers, those we say we look up to the most, knew this. They agonized over it, but they knew, walking in the door, that they had little choice. Either keep the bloody tool and hope and pray for National repentance, or there would be no Nation conceived inLiberty .
Wrap your head around that. We were born with slavery’s knife in one hand andLiberty ’s pen in the other -- and so goes the lot
of mankind.
The pen became a sword.
We buried the knife in our collective heart and mind -- where our soul resides.
An evil thing made of stolen lives was re-rooted in fresh, fertile soil. The hilt of the tool, still in our hand, looked a lot like the Bible. Popes and Kings had been doing it for nearly two thousand years, now it was our turn to make the Good Book say what we needed it to say.
Now that we’d won our right to bend the Bible to our will, we could redefine words like all and equal and men. We could reduce our core ideal to a cliche and pretend that the way they're written, those words mean, “I better get mine or there will be blood.”
And there is still blood.
“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
So, how about we do this?
“…pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.”
Living -- yeah -- I like that part, and that's why our founding documents are so important.
The Constitution is the law of the land, and it is founded upon The Declaration of Independence, the expression of our ideals, the higher law we have set for ourselves.
I submit to you that any deed, practice, or law that detracts from the realization of those ideals is worse than breaking the rules. When we do that, we continue to break the promises We the People made to ourselves.
What we need to admit is that the American ideal is not the fact of the matter. Our Founding Fathers were painfully aware that they themselves could never live up to the words, but they had to believe that one day the
Why else would they end the Declaration with this clause: “…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”? We still have the actual piece of paper; the one we literally carried, in pockets and satchels, throughout the war it started.
Ideal, what a word.
We can talk about “having” ideals, but that’s one of those deceptive idioms that color the American language. “Having ideals” is like having dreams and goals, because by definition ideals are to be striven for, not tucked into a pocket and taken to the bank.
“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,
Yeah...about that...we still can’t quite decide what ideal equality looks likes yet, but we do know what it doesn’t look like. It doesn’t look like a snowflake SJW slashing a dude’s tires because he’s a blue-collar working man; and it certainly doesn’t look like punk-ass white boy terrorists driving a car into a crowd of their fellow humans.
They both suck; their actions and lack of compassion are nasty symptoms of infection.
They ooze out of our self inflicted scar.
Not talking about slavery. Slavery is neither the scar nor the infection; it was the knife. An ugly living thing made of flesh and blood and bone. Organic and malignant.
Who stabbed us with it?
You just thought “white men,” I know I did, but I was wrong. Who’s going to tell me that her heart can’t be as calloused as his, or that he can't be as compassionate as she?
I have to say: the knife was wielded by the very white Christian men and women trying to rise above European Christendom and European government.
But back to the knife.
It was brought over in 1492, and it wasn’t always a knife; it was a living tool. For three hundred years it grew, it learned, it evolved, and it did all the other things "intelligent life" does.
We ratified the Constitution anyway.
We were conceived with this hateful tool already in our hand, and had even begun to carve ourselves up with it. The Founding Fathers, those we say we look up to the most, knew this. They agonized over it, but they knew, walking in the door, that they had little choice. Either keep the bloody tool and hope and pray for National repentance, or there would be no Nation conceived in
Wrap your head around that. We were born with slavery’s knife in one hand and
The pen became a sword.
We buried the knife in our collective heart and mind -- where our soul resides.
An evil thing made of stolen lives was re-rooted in fresh, fertile soil. The hilt of the tool, still in our hand, looked a lot like the Bible. Popes and Kings had been doing it for nearly two thousand years, now it was our turn to make the Good Book say what we needed it to say.
Now that we’d won our right to bend the Bible to our will, we could redefine words like all and equal and men. We could reduce our core ideal to a cliche and pretend that the way they're written, those words mean, “I better get mine or there will be blood.”
And there is still blood.
“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,
So, how about we do this?
“…pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.”
Paul
(NASB)
Isn’t that a decent way to treat
equals?
As for my own pursuit of peace, I want to tell you the story the Bible tells this American without weighing it down with dogmatic luggage and the white man’s guilty burden.*
It's only fair that I start telling the stories of the Book of Books with a little bit about me, and talk a little bit about what I'm doing. So take a minute to say HEY! or ask questions, or whatever, then go ahead and read the Foreword.
Peace Out Y'all
*Don’t get all butt hurt. It was our heroes who got us to here we are. Rather than wasting time trying to justify the evil they did, I believe the best ones would rather we move forward, toward the American Ideal.
As for my own pursuit of peace, I want to tell you the story the Bible tells this American without weighing it down with dogmatic luggage and the white man’s guilty burden.*
It's only fair that I start telling the stories of the Book of Books with a little bit about me, and talk a little bit about what I'm doing. So take a minute to say HEY! or ask questions, or whatever, then go ahead and read the Foreword.
Peace Out Y'all
*Don’t get all butt hurt. It was our heroes who got us to here we are. Rather than wasting time trying to justify the evil they did, I believe the best ones would rather we move forward, toward the American Ideal.
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