“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…”
Declaration of Independence
The men who accepted the words above and signed their names were issuing a challenge to the King of England. To see this challenge through to the end they pledged their lives and their sacred honor to one another.
They were in fact, creating a set of three successive challenges for themselves and their posterity.
The first of these challenges was to fight a war with the greatest military power in the world. Defeat meant they would mount the gallows and die as traitors. Victory presented an even greater challenge than that of the battlefield.
If by some miracle they won, they would be tasked with creating a government to secure life, liberty, and property and do so with the consent of those who would be governed. I remind you that most of those to be governed had fled what they considered an oppressive government. They would not consent readily or easily—they were a contrary, quarrelsome lot who just demonstrated that they would turn on their government if it didn’t represent them. All thirteen of these quasi-independent states would have to agree to whatever government was created.
The government they created was, of necessity, a compromise. Everybody got something they wanted—nobody got everything they wanted. And that left the men who penned the lines that introduced this post with the third and greatest challenge—to work with the government they created to make it live up to the ideals they espoused.
We have never been closer to meeting the third challenge—nor ever faced a threat deadlier to its attainment. Critical race theory is antithetical to the American ideal and its own stated ends. It is more than a giant step backward in time, it is the enemy of individual equality, life, liberty, and property.
A note here for the unread, Madison writing in the Federalist Papers described property as far more than tangible assets. The fruits of our own labor, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, that is the pursuit of what will provide for our personal happiness were our property and worthy of the protection of the government. Vibration at your own frequency is your property, according to the chief architect of the Constitution.
Critical race theory, which encompasses far more than race, denies personal choice, the value of personal effort, and personal morals and ethics. It locks each race, gender (no matter how many you choose to accept), and lifestyle orientation into an unalterable paradigm of thought and action. It denies free will or the possibility of behavior outside your preset genetic makeup.
Who determines how each race and gender behaves, whosoever can claim the greatest victimhood. The theory creates its own hierarchy of victims and oppressors such that neither is guilty or innocent by behavior, but by accident of birth.
We have dealt with this issue since the inception of the country—with the creation of humanity for that matter. Critical race theory celebrates oppression, thievery of property, and the end of life and liberty for those it deems not fit to live.
I have what some call a huge character fault. I think I picked it up from reading Numbers 11. Look it up. The principle is that if you want bad enough, even something that is bad for you, God may give it to you until it comes out your nostrils.
My father never read the Bible, but he knew the principle well. He once caught me trying his cigar. He let me have it—it didn’t come out my nostrils, but it did come out rather violently.
Give me an ultimatum, I will always take the “or else” for spite if for no other reason. I am easily entreated until accommodation reaches idiocy. I won’t violate my sense of who I am for anyone. Sadly, there is a point at which I will resort to violence. I do everything I can to avoid that place—even to the point that my friends have to prod me to “stand up for yourself”. But once that line is crossed, there is no return until the aftermath of an atomic solution.
There is an old adage I want to remind those who espouse critical race theory—be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
Maranatha
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