Just Words

Words are important. President Obama, during his campaign, spoke of the value of words. In his famous “just words” speech, he quotes Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, and the Constitution saying “don’t tell me words don’t matter”. He is right. Words matter.

Here are the words I think are the most important : “…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness-That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” How simple and eloquent.

Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, set the theory about the Divine Rights of Kings upside down. The rights of citizens are not those that the government determines citizens should have. The rights of citizens come from the Creator, God, and passed through to the government. That is the foundation of our great nation. It comes with good and bad. There are no guarantees that we will always be happy…but the right to pursue happiness, the right to live, the right to freedom, is sacrosanct, and allows for mankind’s fulfillment.

Those words have served as a beacon to this nation for over 200 years: to end slavery, to provide for women’s suffrage, and to pave the way for racial equality through the civil rights movement. Government cannot subjugate human beings. Given these rights, human beings will flourish. Currently, in the United States, ancestors of slaves are now major players in government, from the White House, to the Attorney General, to the current Chairman of the Republican Party, to the Supreme Court. Our rights come from God. Jefferson’s words are not “just words.” They are the bedrock of hope for humanity.

Hillary Clinton said it takes a village to raise a child. It takes a family to raise a child. We joke about the nanny state, but will the state love and care for our children, for our spouses, for our seniors? When a child is born into a family, the family rejoices. The parents would give their own lives to save the lives of their children. When our parents get sick, we take care of them to the best of our ability, attempting to bring them comfort in their old age as be we can.

Will the government do the same? What kind of care will a nanny state provide? The nanny state will provide enough to get by, and no more, and probably less. While a human family views the birth of a child as a miracle, a gift from God, to the nanny state it is another mouth to feed, therefore expendable. Abortions decrease the surplus population. As we move towards nationalized health care, the nanny state will provide to our seniors only that care which it deems acceptable…that it deems cost efficient. In the Netherlands, euthanasia is practiced by state sponsored physicians on a regular basis. Tom Daschle, who is this administration’s guru for health care, praised the Dutch for their acceptance of death and the ravages of old age and their discouragement of medical treatment. Is that what we want?

Freedom and liberty are precious. How much are we willing to sacrifice for enough comfort just to get by? Thomas Jefferson’s words are the lifeblood of the nation, spelling out our rights as human beings, and wariness of an unlimited and omnipotent government. We should cling to them as we cling to our children and our aging parents. If we don’t, to our children, they will be “just words!”