Osborne: Rights At Stake

To The Editor,

The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States reasserts the Declaration of Independence’s contention that no ruling king or class of people had rightful power over any others. To wit, under the law of the land all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Constitutionally redefined as property).

These are rights due an individual that are protected within our form of government by the courts. And the justice receipt of such rights within our “ever more perfect union” (the direction of ever increasing liberty also prescribed in the Preamble to the United States Constitution) is assured by law as ultimately defined by the highest court.

A lynch mob declaring itself to be just WE THE PEOPLE in exercise of majority rule is no more of a legitimate exercise of power than is treating a woman as nothing more than a container that is subject to risk and damage in survival service to some supposed other potential person that is so defined and judged to be more precious by some religious fanatics bent on public demonstration of nothing more than their own great piety.

Anyone thinking of themselves as being so pure of purpose that they can disregard the good of an individual, that is doing no more than finding and minding their own affairs, will one day find themself unwillingly martyred within the holier-than-thou sanction with which they have blessed themselves. “He who would burn a witch at the stake will one day go up in smoke,” ~ Anon. Or, “What goes around comes around,” same source in youth.

In the meantime, who protects us from Newt?

Sam Osborne,
West Branch, Iowa