American Views Abroad

Rosa Brooks in The Founders' Right Stuff in the LA Times says it best on this Fourth of July:

..... The Constitution also doesn't contain any footnotes that say, 'Note to our descendants: The Constitution is intended for easy times only. At the first sign of trouble, feed this document to your dog. .....This Fourth of July, celebrate by re-reading the Declaration of Independence, created by more or less the same crowd who brought us the Constitution, 11 years and one war later. Remember it?

'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'

Wild Stuff! To the founders, 'all men' have 'inalienable rights' --- not just US citizens in the continental United States. .....The founders had a word for governments that respected rights only arbitrarily and selectively: tyranny.

www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks3-2008jul03,0,5347543.column