Food for Thought on Independence Day 2007
It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter
gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect - that of taking
rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters,
by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by
exclusion, in the hands of a few. ... They...consequently are instruments
of injustice.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part the Second
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The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves,
each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact
with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode
in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle
on which they have a right to exist.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part the First
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The circumstances of the world are continually changing,
and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the
living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any
right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient
in one age may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another.
In such cases, who is to decide, the living or the dead?
Ibid.
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Lay then the axe to the root, and teach governments
humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments which corrupt mankind.
In England the punishment in certain cases is by hanging, drawing
and quartering; the heart of the sufferer is cut out and held up
to the view of the populace. In France, under the former Government,
the punishments were not less barbarous. Who does not remember the
execution of Damien, torn to pieces by horses? The effect of those
cruel spectacles exhibited to the populace is to destroy tenderness
or excite revenge; and by the base and false idea of governing men
by terror, instead of reason, they become precedents. It is over
the lowest class of mankind that government by terror is intended
to operate, and it is on them that it operates to the worst effect.
They have sense enough to feel they are the objects aimed at; and
they inflict in their turn the examples of terror they have been
instructed to practise.
Ibid.
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For as long as men have sought to be free, arbitrary
arrest has been a mark and measure of despotism.
Alan Barth
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The true foundation of republican government is the
equal right of every citizen in his person and property, and in
their management.
Thomas Jefferson
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Any society that would give up a little liberty to
gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Benjamin Franklin
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Freethinkers of Colorado Springs
P.O. Box 62946
Colorado Springs, CO 80962-2946
Phone: 719-594-4506
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