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It is past time for Americans to read the Declaration of Independence, and this time really understand what it says. The National Archives actually has the original digitized so you can look at it and see the signatures.

In understanding the seriousness of the document you must remember that in signing the document those men, our Founding Fathers, were providing the Crown with evidence of treason that was punishable by execution and forfeiture of all property. They really meant what was said in that document. They really believed in the words the document contained. People don’t voluntarily line up for a gallows and condemn their families to poverty in the proclamation of “suggestions”.

In a letter to Joshua Speed on August 24, 1855, Abraham Lincoln wrote: “Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty, –to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

Hundreds of thousands of Americans died removing the “Negro” exception. People died and were imprisoned to remove the “Woman” exception. In spite of these bloody episodes, some continue to try to create exceptions to “all Men are created equal”. This is not an “American Tradition”; it is a form of “political herpes”, a disease that we have to continually battle, but never seem able to eliminate. It keeps breaking out in a slightly different form throughout our history, nurtured by pockets of hate and ignorance.

We are now dealing with the disease as it attempts to instill a “Homosexual” exception. As with the earlier exceptions the “disease vectors” are disguising their true nature with religion. Various states and courts have begun treating the “symptoms”, but until the United States resurrects the ideals of its founders, I fear the disease will simply go dormant until it can find another carrier to spread.

Michael at Musing’s musings, Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof, and NTodd at Dohiyi Mir all have takes on the efforts of a California court to control the recent outbreak.

[Edit: Thanks to Michael at Musing’s musings for the pointer to the Lincoln letter.]

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