Inalienable, recently forgotten, rights

(reblogged from: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/05/the-eye-of-the-storm.html )

I just had to reblog this, if only to keep it somewhere I can find it - big props to Zach!

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If I wake up tomorrow dead, because some gooberheads and chowderbrains blew up my great home state of Texas, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to read the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and that plaque at Lady Liberty's feet and I want you to uphold them. I ask you to defend those words because they are what have made this country great, up until recent decades when our country has stopped being as great as perhaps it once was, because we stopped upholding those words.

I ask you not to uphold those words for just some Americans, or all Americans, or anyone with whom you happen to agree. I ask you to please uphold those words for all men and women regardless of race, creed, color, gender, place of origin, current whereabouts, sexual orientation, preference in music, or whether or not they agree with what's in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and that plaque at Lady Liberty's feet. I want you to promise me that if I die because of terrorism, you will uphold these words and extend them to the very people who killed me. Why? Because the Bush administration didn't uphold these words. The Obama administration is not upholding these words. Nancy Pelosi, when she was told about waterboarding and she didn't do a doubletake and spit out her dentures, she didn't uphold these words. She bowed to overwhelming pressures when it was her JOB not to. NONE of our civil servants are upholding these words, and it's not the words that protect us but our vigilance and dedication to them. That is what protects us, or rather would protect us, if someone was actually doing that and no one is. Our civil servants are not upholding the very words that give them jobs. So if the Lone Star State explodes in a glorious fireball because gooberheads and chowderbrains took my inalienable rights, I ask you please to not take theirs. Turnabout is NOT fair play. It's cheating. We're better than them.

Inalienable rights mean just that. Life, Liberty, and Happiness for everybody; not just the people you don't mind having in your backyard. If we don't do this, if we don't continue to uphold those words as a beacon of justice and equality to the rest of the world, it's not that the terrorists win. Screw the terrorists. They're gooberheads and chowderbrains. They can't win.

If we don't do this, We The People lose, and we have only ourselves to blame.

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