Making Things Better
So, summer’s approaching. You’re feeling pretty good, but, well, since the weather is changing you feel you might need to prepare for what’s coming. You’ve never done this before, and you’ve always gotten through summers before, but they’re telling you about Climate Change and tanned trend-setter footballers’ wives. So you go out and buy some self-tanning lotion. You apply it, you wait, and oh lordy you look like crap. You’re streaky and orange and what’s worse, you’re even less prepared for the summer conditions than you were before. You couldn’t possibly compete in beach conditions looking like this! So you sit back and ponder for a while. Ah hah! You say. I know what I’ll do! I’ll scrub this stuff off, and then I’ll go out and buy a different self-tanning lotion!
June 27th, 2006 at 3:10 am
The American Bill of Rights is careful to point out that it is not an exhaustive list of the rights and responsibilities of the American people, but only a minimum set of standards. In effect, it is more in line with the traditional English approach of delineating/curtailing the rights and responsibilities of kings, although it seems to be the other way around at face value.
The key question is this: Which is the master: the one that gives the rights or the one that receives them? If We The People are truly in charge, then it is we who hand the list to the government and say “here are your rights”.
I suspect that modern proponents of Bills of Rights are thinking of doing the opposite.