The One Funny Thing About This Film

davidwile,

My statements about cynicism were directed as much to the OP as you, but in fact much more broadly. When I say "cheap", I mean that it is easy to attack the government. It's a convenient fall guy, and doing so doesn't require creative thought, or sometimes any thought.

I have great suspicion about people who selectively quote Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, and twist his words to suit their own beliefs, as you have done. Some on the far right have claimed that Jefferson advocated armed insurrection against the government, which he did not. In any case, people like you seem to treat everything Jefferson said as infallible truth. Why? Thomas Jefferson was just a human being, not God, and as prone to mistakes, errors in judgment and other human failings as any other man, including all the founding fathers. He made many misjudgments in his life, was like many of his contemporaries hypocritcal about slavery, was a poor governor of Virginia, had other failures. He himself violated his supposed limited government beliefs in bypassing Congress to acquire the Louisiana Territory, and acted as he chose when it suited him, regardless of his prior belief in executive restraint. A great man? Indeed. But approach him realistically, completely and honestly. Not everything he said or did, even within its full context, is received wisdom to be slavishly followed or not to be questioned, and it's certainly not justification for individuals to do whatever they wish.

It's part of American folklore to simplistically portray the fathers as noble, divinely inspired, faultless and far-seeing...truly, as demigods. In truth they were all normal human beings, of great gifts certainly, but scarcely infallible. The fact that they disagreed amongst themselves proves that there is not one rigid line of received thought that all must follow without deviation. They were also smart enough to realize that the country would and must evolve, which is why the Constitution, while laying down some fundamental rights and obligations, was also left flexible enough in parts so as to be interpreted and amended as conditions changed.

The fact is that individual rights are stronger in this country than ever before. Freedoms once denied to blacks, women, and others, have been protected by law, and such discrimination is no longer countenanced or legal. It is part of the far right gospel these days that "government" is trampling on people's freedoms, that a socialist monster is devouring our rights, and so on. Try going to a true dictatorship -- North Korea, Iran, Cuba, any of the places where you really have no rights, where you cannot say or do anything out loud, are watched by informers and secret police, face torture, imprisonment and even death, with no rights of any kind. All the world would love to have the freedoms we enjoy in this country. To claim these are being stifled or restricted is preposterous, a triumph of mindless hysteria over facts and reason.

I've known people who lived under actual dictatorships -- in Hungary, Poland, the former USSR, even in Nazi Germany. Go tell them their rights are being taken away here. They'll laugh you out of the room, in barely suppressed outrage.

In truth, what people who make such idiotic and factually false claims want is the right to do whatever they want, period. What such people don't realize or grasp is that there is no freedom without the law; no right is unalloyed; you cannot simply pick and choose which laws you will observe and those you won't, and you have no right to act unlawfully to get your way. Anarchy is not freedom. No founding father advocated an unlimited right to do whatever one wished, nor allowing a minority -- whose rights are enshrined in and protected by law -- to take it upon itself to violently overthrow the government of the majority. And if one group arrogates unto itself the right to so act, then so may any other self-styled group of "patriots" who deem that government an infrignement on their rights. No one, including Jefferson, proposed or countenanced continued internal warfare and lawlessness as a means of change in government or policy.

This is a great country. It has a lot of problems, but it will endure, and survive even those who seek to destroy a government they don't happen to agree with (and which a majority of the people voted for -- and I mean any government, not just the present administration). There's a lot wrong with America, but much more that's right. You want to help solve our financial or other problems? Use the tools our laws and Constitution provide you with to achieve your goals. Criticize what's bad. But act with truth, not delusion. Perverting the past through selective quotations, devoid of thought and resistant to reality, is not a justification for anything.

Your rights are there, more secure than ever, protected and affirmed by law. If it were really the case that we were losing our freedoms, none of this would be permitted on the internet, and one or both of us would be in jail.

Of course, nothing I've said will make any difference to your thinking. Such a bubble is impossible to burst. So, I'll just say, best regards.