Gods and the Progressive Movement?

Gods and the Progressive Movement?
By Ryan Riell

Ladies and Gentlemen… the US Senate have declared themselves to be Gods! Now that’s a pretty bold statement, so let me elaborate on this for you.

Way back on July 4th, 1776, a bunch of crazy, right-wing nuts such as John Hancock, Samuel Adams Thomas Jefferson came up with some absolutely ridiculous document called the Declaration of Independence.

“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.”

These crazies went on to conclude this silly document with “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

And then, they took this right wing craziness even further with another ridiculous document that was titled the “Constitution of the United States.” And to make things even worse, they added 10 more absolutely ridiculous restrictions on the federal government that are commonly referred to as the Bill of Rights. To make things worse, subsequent lunatics added another 17 amendments!

For the purposes of this article, lets focus our fury on the asinine 10th Amendment – Powers of the States and People, which was ratified way, way back in December of 1791. These right-wing, astro-turf loving tea baggers had the audacity to ratify such an outrageous amendment that said “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Now, I’ve been told that I have a rather sarcastic and somewhat condescending sense of humor, so that being said- if you’re a progressive (that’s the new buzz word for liberal), this is the actual way you think about our founding fathers, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If you identify yourself as a liberal or progressive and you don’t think this way, you better wake up, the political leaders that you’ve helped elect think this way! For those of you that believe in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, then you realize that the above text is laced with some very condescending humor, which most liberals wouldn’t have picked up on due to their absolute lack of common sense.

OK, so how did the US Senate declare themselves God? If you listen to Senator Harkin (D-IA) had to say, your head might explode. Feel free to click the part of the video, you can hear it yourself! Lets go hit the top 3 from this 1:03 video:

1) “We take that step from healthcare as a privilege to health care as
an unalienable right of every single American citizen.
2) When discussing the bill and how is “progressive friends have
been upset that certain things weren’t in it” he went on to say
“What we are building here is not a mansion, it’s a starter home.
It’s a start home. But it’s got a great foundation. We are adding
health care coverage to 31 million Americans. It’s got a great roof,
protective roof protecting in protecting people form abuses by
insurance companies. And it has room for expansions and
additions in the future. But if we don’t start the starter home,
we’ll never get there. So this is not the end of healthcare
reform, this is the beginning of healthcare reform.”
“Like every right that we’ve ever passed, the American people,
we revisit it later to enhance and build on those rights, and we
do that here surely.”



OK, let me repeat that silly part of the Declaration of Independence for future reference:

“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.”

OK, so lets go through the points and paint the full picture for you:
Point 1) If the rights that we are talking about are “endowed” by your “creator,” where does the Senate derive the power to endow us with more rights?

Point 2) What other rights has the US Senate or for that matter, Congress ever passed on to us? Are they God?

As it says in the Declaration of Independence, these rights are “endowed by their creator” which means GOD has endowed us with them, not a republican or democratic lawmaker. Do you have a problem with this? If you don’t, you better grab both your ears and pull your head out of your @$$.

If the US Senate has deemed themselves as your “creator”, granting themselves the ability to “pass” rights onto American citizens as if they are God, it’s a logical extension that they will then have the right to take away said rights.

Point 3) As Harkin said, this is simply getting their foot in the door. You might have taken a deep breath and been thankful that the public option is not on the table, but you are wrong. In the progressives own words “this is not the end of healthcare reform, this is the beginning of healthcare reform” and “ it has room for expansions and additions in the future.”

The thing that most people have never heard or fail to understand is that progressive point of view. A 2008 book “American Progressivism” which was edited by R. Prestritto and W. Atto sums it up best with the following statement which I have paraphrased here in italics:

Progressives understand the intention and structure of the Constitution very well; they know it established a framework for limited government, that these limits were to be upheld by a variety of institutional restraints and checks [they have control of 2 of the 3]. They also know that the limits placed on the national government by the Constitution represented a major obstacle to implementing the progressive policy agenda. Progressives have in mind a variety of legislative programs aimed at regulating significant portions of American economy [Cap and Trade, Carbon Credits, TARP, Stimulus 1 and 2] and society and at redistributing private property in the name of social justice [see next paragraph]. The Constitution, if interpreted faithfully, stands in the way of this agenda.

Can anyone tell me, before listening to the audio, who said this:

“If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement
and it’s litigation strategy in the courts, I think where it succeeded was
to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed people... but the
Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of
wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic
justice in the society... it didn’t break free from the essential
constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the
Constitution at least as it been interpreted, and more important
interpreted in the same way that generally, the Constitution is a
charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you,
says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf and that hasn’t shifted!”



“One of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the
civil right movement became so court focused, I think there was a
tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of power through which you bring about redistributive change and in some ways, we still suffer from that.”

In general, the progressive movement argues that the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and Amendments are a living, breathing document that needs to be reexamined in each historical period.

They are doing everything in their power to move beyond the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution since, in their opinion, the founding fathers were short sighted, sexist and bigoted people that were only capable of understanding government as a product of their historical context.

They have been intelligent/subtle enough in the past to not take on any of Amendments to the US Constitution directly. If you look at the gun laws in Chicago, they are nibbling at the second amendment very, very slowly and subtly. If they can pile up enough small wins, they add up to a large win and the removal of the 2nd amendment.

Now, with healthcare, they are taking some of the boldest action seen yet… they are directly challenging the 10th Amendment and have publicly declared healthcare as a right.

Let me be very clear- the ONLY rights that we have are in the US Constitution and the subsequent 27 amendments. If ANYONE in America wants healthcare to be a RIGHT, it needs to be added as the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution… it’s NOT something that Congress has the legal authority to “endow” us with.

This is a very exciting time in America’s history. With a progressive controlled Congress and White House, we cannot rely on either. The only defense we have left is the US Constitution and the court system, once the healthcare bill has actually been passed.

President Obama and the progressive majority in Congress are attacking the US Constitution and YOUR unalienable rights that were endowed upon you by God.