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We humans are great at
self-aggrandizement. We are always proclaiming our "right" to this or that.
But we do not come into this world with a bill of rights attached to our
umbilical cord. We only have the rights we confer upon ourselves through
laws written by ourselves and enforced by courts and police we pay to
enforce them. Does Planet Earth really belong to anyone? Earth existed
millions of years before homo sapiens appeared, and will continue to exist
after homo sapiens is gone, unless we destroy it or it encounters some
extra-terrestrial object. Meanwhile earth travels through space at 67,000
miles per hour, final destination unknown and oblivious to the tiny mites
that pretend to be its pilot. Meanwhile, we bask in our manmade laws and
"rights," afraid to acknowledge our irrelevance in the scheme of things. We
make assertions not provable that in fact are easily disproved.
The Declaration of Independence is (or at least was) revered by most
Americans. In 1776 The Continental Congress appointed a committee of five
men (women not being part of politics at the time) to draft it: Thomas
Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman and Robert
Livingston. The committee assigned most of the writing to Thomas Jefferson,
but John Adams and Benjamin Franklin made minor alterations. Franklin's
alteration was a more concise editing of Jefferson's florid statement on
equality: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, etc. "This assertion is untrue and has caused considerable mischief.
It has been extrapolated by progressives (later known as liberals) to be
absolute, not restricted to the areas of law and religion as Franklin and
Jefferson intended.
I can demonstrate that everyone is not born equal with a few comparisons.
Are Mother Teresa and Charles Manson morally equivalent? Is Janet Reno as
attractive as Elizabeth Taylor? Is Mike Tyson as smart as Bill Gates? Is
Bill Gates as strong as Mike Tyson? See what I mean. By equality, the
founders meant that one's wealth or social standing would not benefit them
in a court of law or before the judgment seat of God. Of course, it did
benefit them then and does today, at least in a court of law.
As an attorney once told me: "we are not taught to uphold the law but to get
around the law, anyway we can." Of course we humans must try to make our
journey through a fathomless cosmos as pleasant as possible. A certain
amount of hubris is necessary, and if that entails waving our little pieces
of paper and declaring our "rights," then so be it. |
