CommentsONE MAN’S OPINION-While Americans are tweeting their irrational, hyper-emotional memes, the GOP and the Dems are de-constructing the U.S. Constitution for fun and profit – their fun and their profit.
Group Rights: Inalienable Rights’ Deadly Foe
The purpose of any government is to secure every individual’s inalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. In order to emphasize the individual nature of inalienable rights, Thomas Jefferson added two features to the Declaration of Independence.
(1) By “Equal,” Jefferson Rejected Group Rights
When Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” he was being redundant to make certain everyone understood that he was categorically rejecting the British class system. Theoretically, one might think that all men had inalienable rights, but some important people had more of them. The word “equal” clarified that each individual’s inalienable rights were no more and no less than any other individual’s.
(2) “Property” Replaced By “Pursuit of Happiness”
John Locke, on whose philosophy much of the Declaration is based, spoke of Life, Liberty and Property. In America, however, slaves were property and one purpose of the Declaration was to lay the ground work to end slavery. Individuals cannot have inalienable rights if they can be categorized by groups and one group can own another group. Thus, Jefferson substituted the words “Pursuit of Happiness.” (One shortcoming of our system has been not dovetailing “Pursuit of Happiness” with other rights.)
The Constitution Adopted Inalienable Rights
The Constitution’s Preamble states that one of its purposes was to “secure the blessings of Liberty” and said nothing about “Equality.” Why would it? Equality instantly leads to Group Rights and the Declaration was a repudiation of Group Rights, in which an individual’s rights are somehow tied to his or her membership in some ascriptive group, be it the British class system or slavery, or belonging to a favored religion.
All Group Rights are “Racist”
The proliferation of groups denying the rights of others for such things as being Gay, or Transgender, or “refusing Jesus Christ” has made speaking about this situation cumbersome. To simplify matters, we are using the words “racist” and “racism” for any classification of people by some ascriptive grouping. In this sense, kicking Transgenders out of the military is racist. All calls for Group Rights are in this sense racist – Group Rights treat Americans not based on their individual characters but based on the color of their skin, their religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientations.
Humpty-Trumpty’s Histrionic Racism
In an ironic way, Trump’s Histrionic Personality Disorder somewhat diminishes his culpability for his racism. Histrionics are addicted to cheers more than Nancy Pelosi is addicted to power; the need for cheers controls Histrionics’ lives. As a Histrionic, Trump thrives on the drama of being in the center of a cheering crowd.
A fun experiment for a college class is to show approval each time a self-centered professor takes a step toward the door. Leaning slightly forward in your seat, or even opening your eyes wider, or slightly nodding, or showing other signs of approval will work. Any move away from the door is discouraged with signs of disapproval like a yawn or subtle head shake. Slowly, the self-centered approval-seeking prig will move closer to the door until he or she is at the doorway itself.
Likewise, Trump moves towards cheers of approval. Extremists shout the loudest as they are hyper emotional. Had Trump appeared before groups of far-left leaning hyper-partisans, he’d be a roaring Communist by now, denouncing Putin as a reactionary. Instead, the GOP had its Christian “White is Right” contingent. Trump played to their cheers without regard to the content. Because histrionics live on adulation, Trump keeps having campaign rallies – two years after the election.
Trump’s base is filled with paranoid people who suffer from the delusion that Mexicans cause their problems. Thus, whenever Trump screams some insanely racist BS about Mexicans (like they are murderers flooding over our border) they holler wildly. Within the bizarro world of the Histrionic, truth plays no role. All that matters is the intensity of the crowd’s roar.
Reduced to its absurd basics, Trump shut down the government so that his racist anti-Mexican base would continue to cheer.
Pelosi’s Group Rights Similarly Threatens the Republic
Nancy Pelosi’s cold and calculating Group Rights are equally dangerous for the Republic. She knows that her version of Identity Politics is designed to separate Americans from each other and to create groups that are beholden to her. Pelosi goes beyond having people identify as a group; she pushes for special rights. People may not say disparaging things about any group, unless it is against a right-wing group. Like all religious fanatics, the Dem’s groups are all good and holy, while wearing a MAGA hat makes someone a Nazi or KKKer.
Group Rights Are Great for Fundraising
Once one drinks the Group Rights Kool-Aide, whatever der furher or die furheress proclaims becomes the Truth. Questioning is a sign of a traitor who should be shunned. The Dems have taken up the tried and true practice of religious cults by shunning people who speak heresies.
Inalienable Rights are Inimical to Group Rights
For the GOP and the Dems, the great sin of individual inalienable rights is that it kills stereotyping. Treating every individual based on his or her own character provides no platform for stereotyping. Oh horrors, what will happen to Pelosi’s fundraising if the Dems may not cyber bully 16-year old Nick Sandmann? Next time the crowd corners a David Hogg or a Nick Sandmann expect echoes of “kill the pig, do him in” like in Lord of the Flies.
Decent people would take the time to find out the facts. As the GOP did with Hogg, the Dems intentionally distorted the video and the Sandmann story. Nowhere did Nancy Pelosi suggest that bigotry was not appropriate. For both the Histrionic Donald Trump and the money-raising machine Nancy Pelosi, individual inalienable rights are an anathema. Americans no longer have the patience to treat other Americans as individual human beings with the inalienable right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” but that means nothing to the GOP or Dems who depend upon turning Americans against each other in the hope of aggrandizing their own wealth and power. A nation torn apart by Group Rights cannot endure.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
