Moved
Posted at the NEW and IMPROVED American Athens also. Please join the discussion there.
We’ll be getting back into the swing of more frequent, yet still infrequent, posting in the coming days. Lee is spending some time in Egypt, hopefully trying to avoid causing an international incident, and will return in a couple weeks. Meanwhile, I’ve moved from frat-row in Allston to the greener pastures of West Roxbury/Roslindale (no one is sure exactly where the house is), which is a most welcome if somewhat sweeping change.
Unfortunately, I moved just in time to be represented by State Rep. Mike F. Rush at Tuesday’s ConCon. Rep. Rush voted in favor of the Anti-Marriage Equality Amendment, though he did at least also vote in favor of the Health Care Amendment, so I’m not entirely ashamed to admit who represents me on Beacon Hill.
I don’t have much more to add, as I’m several days late on this, save to say that democracies don’t put people’s rights up to a vote. Rights aren’t policy, drafted and compromised upon in dusty rooms and voted upon by legislators or the people, they’re the bedrock on which civil societies are built, and without which there is no principled foundation for the government. Indeed, if we decide that rights may be given and taken at the will of government, or even the people themselves, then we cease to be governed by the rule of law. We are rather governed by the whims of demagogues and the tyranny of the majority. I must believe that such a system was not the intention of the founders of this commonwealth, nor this nation. Yet, Tuesday’s vote calls into question whether or not the self-evident truths upon which this nation was founded are, in fact, all that self-evident.
We’ll be getting back into the swing of more frequent, yet still infrequent, posting in the coming days. Lee is spending some time in Egypt, hopefully trying to avoid causing an international incident, and will return in a couple weeks. Meanwhile, I’ve moved from frat-row in Allston to the greener pastures of West Roxbury/Roslindale (no one is sure exactly where the house is), which is a most welcome if somewhat sweeping change.
Unfortunately, I moved just in time to be represented by State Rep. Mike F. Rush at Tuesday’s ConCon. Rep. Rush voted in favor of the Anti-Marriage Equality Amendment, though he did at least also vote in favor of the Health Care Amendment, so I’m not entirely ashamed to admit who represents me on Beacon Hill.
I don’t have much more to add, as I’m several days late on this, save to say that democracies don’t put people’s rights up to a vote. Rights aren’t policy, drafted and compromised upon in dusty rooms and voted upon by legislators or the people, they’re the bedrock on which civil societies are built, and without which there is no principled foundation for the government. Indeed, if we decide that rights may be given and taken at the will of government, or even the people themselves, then we cease to be governed by the rule of law. We are rather governed by the whims of demagogues and the tyranny of the majority. I must believe that such a system was not the intention of the founders of this commonwealth, nor this nation. Yet, Tuesday’s vote calls into question whether or not the self-evident truths upon which this nation was founded are, in fact, all that self-evident.
posted by 1st Against the Wall at 13:58
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