this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
652 points (98.7% liked)
Political Memes
1862 readers
254 users here now
Non political memes: !memes@sopuli.xyz
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
And when a car gets a flat tire, you don't get new car, you fix the flat. We can all come up with a useless analogy to make a empty point.
The fact is, the basic principles and concepts that were outlined in the founding documents - ALL men are created equal, and we are are ALL endowed by our creator with the inalienable rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, et al, - are still relevant today, and are still the best principles and concepts upon which to base a government today.
We could fix a lot of our problems with a few easy steps, like getting all money out of political campaigns, but that would require all parties to negotiate with each other, AND the voters, in Good Faith, and that's what's been lacking in government. Very, very few of them, on either side, have earned the trust of the people, and many of them have earned unforgivable scorn. They need to start listening to the people.
So we may need to do some serious tuning up and upgrading, but the chassis and the body are still good, and the drivetrain can be brought up to speed, as long as the guys on the second shift don't keep coming in and taking a sledgehammer to it every night, and destroying all our work.
The car has been broken down for awhile and you're still pretending it drives while the right wing is banging it with hammers while it's on its way to a compactor.
It wasn't even made of steel the first time but tin - those words aren't part of the constitution, they're from the declaration of independence, and even then excludes women.
You can't fix a car that's been broken beyond repair, and you can't even rebuild it while people are finishing off what semblances there are with a giant hammer.
Y'all have been needing a new car for awhile but still think it's fine. Then enjoy your fantasy as it's thrown into the furnace of reality.
We generally refer to the Founding Documents - the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, with equal weight. They are the three founding Documents on display in DC.
The Declaration of Independence is the statement that made us a Nation, and is every bit as important and relevant as the Constitution. In fact, until the Constitution was ratified in 1789, this was the sole document that defined America in the 13 years between.
So the opening line, declaring all men to be created equal, is huge. Further, it refers to these things as God-given rights, which means they cannot be taken away by any human, including a president, or even a long.
And "Men" is a metaphor. You say it excludes women, but in fact, it doesn't even really include men. It means people in general, ALL people.
Further, it doesn't even include the racial element that contemporary society likes to ascribe to hypocrisy. When they were talking about All Men Being Created Equal, they didn't mean racially, or even economically. They meant equal as far as class distinctions. Specifically, they were rejecting as a society, the notion of an Aristocracy, in which some people are literally considered to be better quality humans in every way, simply because of their family influence. That superiority gives them great advantages in education, business, government, courts, military, etc.
Not only were they rejecting the Aristocracy, they were literally founding a new nation with that as one of its founding elements. At that time, a totally new nation hadn't been created in human memory, and now that this enormous uncharted landmass had been discovered, here was the first actual nation, that wasn't just a colony of predatory European nations. ALL of those nations recognized the concept of Aristocracy, and none of them liked the idea of a NEW nation where the Aristocracy wasn't respected.
Of course, France broke with the rest, and supported the Continental Army, but that was more a matter of sticking it to England. The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend, and all that. Considering that our revolution inspired their revolution a few years later, with a much nastier outcome, perhaps it wasn't the French Monarchy's best poke at the British. Worked out good for us, though.
so "Men" in the Lord of the Rings sense
Well, yeah, but bigger than that. It has been a customary social expectation for literally centuries, to refer to all collective humanity as "men." Tolkien was merely using it the same common, traditional way, same as the Founding Fathers, and pretty much everyone else in history, until the last few decades.