Opinion

Protesters are invariably in the first category. They demand action. So while, yes, they are out there “doing something”, what they are doing is demanding that someone else do.

So, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen, not to mention Rudolf and his red nose, were all empty baggers?

Memphis, the city of my youth, is now lost. The attack at a Krogers grocery a few days ago a little over a mile from where I lived has now been followed by a street attack in my wife’s old neighborhood.

Our rights, whether considering the US Constitution or those adopted by the United Nations, have a common origin.

No matter how many times I chase this around the bush, I come back to the same conclusions:

But after careful review in which I sometimes borrow and adapt ideas for my own purposes, I’ve never found any overall process or organization better than this.

Number one in my list is this series from HBO.

Here’s the time-line to keep in mind.

1. British citizens settled in the New World over a couple of centuries.
2. Britain’s King George, strapped for cash, taxed the colonies to help pay the country’s bills, but did so without consulting his citizenry in that New World – he effectively made them non-citizens.
3. The settlers rose up (1776), kicked the British out and created their own country under the terms of its first “Articles of Confederation” (ratified by the states in 1781).
4. That government failed (was deemed unworkable) on several fronts.
5. A “constitutional convention” then created what we know today as the Constitution of the United States (ratified by the states in 1789).
6. Fearful of the power of the government thusly created, however, that same “constitutional convention” immediately proposed twelve (12) Amendments for consideration by the states.
7. The first two (2) of those were rejected but the remaining ten (10) were approved by the states.
8. “Article the Fourth” in the original proposals, after taking out the two rejected proposals, therefore became the “Second Amendment”.
9. Because they list inherent rights, those ten amendments are known as the “Bill of Rights” – they state rights not granted by governments but, instead, which belong to everyone regardless.

Here is a copy of “Article the Fourth” in the original proposals – click for a larger version.