This series is dedicated to the proposition that Blogging is a prime example of the saying "Variety is the Spice of Life".
Let's get to the good stuff!
July 4th is the one time each year Americans celebrate kicking our now good friends, the Britishers, asses way back in the day:
1. Over on The Volokh Conspiracy you can read the whole Declaration of Independence, along with this observation by Randy Barnett:
The Declaration of Independence as a Legal Document: It is sometimes forgotten that the purpose of the Declaration of Independence was not only to declare independence from Great Britain, but to justify that political separation. To the colonists, it was not enough that the British had violated their rights. Every government violates the rights of the people from time to time and this was not thought sufficient to justify separation. Rather, it was that "a long train of abuses" led to the conclusion that the British government was engaged in something like a continued conspiracy to violate the rights of the colonists. But they felt they had to make out this case, which they did in the form of the Declaration.
It used to be an American tradition to gather on every Fourth of July and hear the Declaration read out loud. On the first day of Constitutional Law, I have my students read it aloud, complaint by complaint, to get a sense for the document that laid the theoretical groundwork for the Articles of Confederation and then the Constitution.
2.
“I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit.”
Andrew Sullivan has written a wonderful, thoughtful, essay on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness:
I believe in life. I believe in treasuring it as a mystery that will never be fully understood, as a sanctity that should never be destroyed, as an invitation to experience now what can only be remembered tomorrow...
I believe in liberty. I believe that within every soul lies the capacity to reach for its own good, that within every physical body there endures an unalienable right to be free from coercion. I believe in a system of government that places that liberty at the center of its concerns, that enforces the law solely to protect that freedom, that sides with the individual against the claims of family and tribe and church and nation, that sees innocence before guilt and dignity before stigma...
I believe in the pursuit of happiness. Not its attainment, nor its final definition, but its pursuit. I believe in the journey, not the arrival; in conversation, not monologues; in multiple questions rather than any single answer...
And I believe in a country that enshrines each of these three things...
3 - 5. Discoshaman, of Postmodern Clog, has several pieces of interest:
He does a round-up of how "Thinkers' on the Left opinioned this 4th of July on the subjects of American History, and the notion of Patriotism.
In his intro he writes:
Some groups are so ridiculous and outré that they defy parody. This thought kept recurring to me today during my weekly jaunt around the left-wing media. Lefties puff with righteous indignation whenever someone questions their patriotism. They know it's an electoral weakspot for them. But their visceral dislike of patriotism seems to be overpowering. It's self-defeating, but they cannot help themselves.
Read, and digest, Left on the 4th of July.
The good news is that The Nation DID print 1 piece with a message the Left needs to hear.
Read what Floyd Abrams had to say.
Discoshaman also did what every parent should do on this holiday:
He taught his 4 young boys "about rights and responsibilities. For every right which God has given to us comes a corresponding duty on our part to use it properly."
The rights and responsibilities of the potty break.
Remember MEN!
It's our patriotic duty to keep America beautiful! :-D
Nice tradition, I am going to start it for myself.
Posted by: Isiah Schwartz | 07/06/2005 at 06:42 AM