Independence Day Fib - "Plotters of Mischief"

Still no pics to go with the fibs - Blogger is playing up again.

Earl writes:

I'm still recovering from the previous writeup that Cernig provided for the last fib and am grateful I was able to provide such a starting point for him. (Thanks, Earl - C)

That being said, it's the Fourth of July, 230 years after the approval of Jefferson's Declaration and I read E.J.Dionne Jr.'s column this morning and nearly got a lump in my throat.

We're still trying, and that's the best compliment this nation could hope for, in my opinion. If you're not trying to improve yourself or your environment you're on the fast track to deterioration, and I plan on being around for a while.

We
The
People...
A Good Start
For Democracy,
We Will Keep Trying To Improve.

Now I've something to say too

Dionne quotes Frederick Douglass, a slave turned abolitionist, from his essay "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?":

To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy," Douglass declared. "Everybody can say it. . . . But there was a time when, to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day." [Emphasis Mine]

If you wish to see just how closely that resonates with today's America, then simply turn to James Joyner who today has a mocking "fisking" of the Declaration of Independence in which he uses the rhetoric of the militant Right when they defend the Bush administration as an argument against the Declaration. Pure genius. All that is needed is to add the NRO masthead and Jonah Goldberg's byline and it would be utterly believable as an actual op-ed from the far Right.

Or if you prefer, here are the words of conservatives of the modern age as they betray the principles of equality and liberty that created the American nation. The first on the recent Supreme Court decision:

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the second-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, said the 5-3 court decision "means that American servicemen potentially could be accused of war crimes".

"I think Congress is going to want to deal with that," McConnell said on NBC's "Meet the Press." He called the ruling "very disturbing."..."I don't think we're going to pass something that's going to have our military servicemen subject to some kind of international rules," said McConnell.

and the second from a prominent militant Right blogger in response to reports of a UK poll that says Brits distrust the direction America has taken over the past decade or so and in particular that they have never had such a low opinion of American leadership (Bush got a 12% approval rating).

Well thank G-d they’re not allowed to vote, then, since that means that their opinion is completely and utterly irrelevant.

The blithe contempt of an elite for the non-elite populace was what drove the American Revolution, as it does all revolutions. Here we see it displayed in all its arrogance. Britons (and every other nationality including Iraqi) are irrelevant, despite being humans inhabiting the globe upon which Bush enacts his vainglorious adventures - they just aren't American you see. Also irrelevant are the children who will inherit America and dead American soldiers. They don't vote.

Its also easy to see the other side of this contemptuous coin - if you wish someone's views and needs to be irrelevant, just stop them voting. Thus the massive GOP "cleaning" of the Florida electorate in 2004, the administration's insistence that charities working with the poorest cease registering voters if they want federal grants, and the current militant Right bid to ditch the Voting Rights Act.

If America is to go forward in the way those activist Founders would have wanted, it needs more plotters of mischief.