In honor of the Declaration of Independence, let me share this by John Pilger & Roger Waters: Assange Birthday Special - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqBZx5lGG2s But, rather, this stands for the “essential rights” necessary to secure political liberty (free speech, press, which is why they came First), which Julian Assange attempted to vindicate for us. Notwithstanding
how the Bush/Cheney administration "affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power,” other than their own power which was coterminous with the “Military," as they intended through their numerous OLC Opinions. To which, at least
Obama pardoned Chelsea Manning, which Trump never would have done, nor would Trump ever have pardoned Assange or Snowden, even though some easily duped persons put out that he might.
So, again, don’t mistake this tribute for the misbegotten Tea Party Movement either, out of which grew the Trumpite Movement, with “so much wool in the heads of libertarians and conservatives that it was child’s
play for Trump to pull it over their eyes,” to paraphrase "Yes, Prime Minister” (please forgive the over-representation of our one-time British oppressors in this email, now fully supplanted by our domestic oppressors).
So here is something we might wish to remember of the Declaration of Independence, even though talk of “equality” and “rights” made Willmoore Kendall and his fellow conservatives in the Conservative Movement
gnash their teeth in anger, preferring instead the segregationists of the era (the soon to be former Democrats, as they were transitioning to the Republican Party) and the Confederate revanchists and the feudal society they celebrated, of the sort celebrated
by Israeli Settler/National Conservative Yoram Hazony as “anti-Enlightenment Liberalism.
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript (in pertinent part):
In Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, . . . 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.-- He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions
on the rights of the people.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. Of course, none of these “rights” applied to slaves or ex-slaves in 1776, and stay silent about that or be accused of “Wokeism” by Conservative. But before the Chauvin trial, one can imagine how this might have particular resonance for African
Americans when one of our militarized police officers would kill someone in the manner of their training by Israeli paramilitary forces, or by our own military aggressions:
"For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:”
Forgive me for my overindulgence of “celebrating” the recognition of “rights” in the Declaration of Independence. But given the open hostility
to even the mention of “rights” by Conservatives in the 1950s, with those fascist inclined “political theorists” now celebrated by the “Right” of today, it is useful to at least remember how such “radical” ideas originated in 1776 so we can put in context
the assault on them today. And understand the denunciation as "Enlightenment Liberalism" the ideas contained therein, as our National Conservative/Trumpite brethren do, as they grind under their iron heels the “1789 Constitution” with its Bill of Rights (the
one Originalists spit on) which the Declaration of Independence gave the impetus to.
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