Posted on 04/14/2007 11:14:50 PM PDT by Graybeard58
RUSH: A friend of mine sent me a quote last night from John Adams in a piece he wrote, "Thoughts on government," from 1776. It kind of got my attention. I want to read this to you. "Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow, that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best." Now, I'll tell you why this struck me, not only because it's brilliant, and not just because it's right. All speculative politicians agree, the happiness of society is the end of government. Hello liberals and a lot of Republicans. It's our job to make people happy. We've gotta come up with programs to make people happy. But moral philosophers, others agree that happiness of the individual is the end of man. It's up to us to be happy. Can't make anybody else happy. Government CAN'T make makes us happy. We have to do it ourselves.
So, the conclusion is, "a form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best." Not the one that will win, but the one that is best. I remember back in the 1980s during the Reagan years, I remember so many people -- and I got back into broadcasting in 1983 -- I remember hearing people say Reagan made 'em feel good about themselves. Reagan made 'em feel good to be Americans, coming off the malaise of those four disastrous years of Jimmy Carter, made people feel good, made people feel happy. Reagan himself was optimistic and of good cheer, and inspired that. According to John Adams here in thoughts on government from 1776, that kind of government's best, not the one that always wins. Contrast that with Democrats, the Democrat Party today and the American left. The word happiness is not in their vocabulary. They are not happy. They don't want you to be happy. They are constantly angry and enraged. In fact, their anger and rage has become the way in which they connect. It's become a virtue. It's how liberals identify themselves.
It's sort of like emperor penguins, they all look alike. Emperor penguins mate, and then the female lays the egg, and the male warms the egg while the female goes miles and miles and miles and miles away to feed because she's been starving. She comes back and those males are all huddled with the eggs, the females come back and the only way they can recognize their mate is by the individual sound the mate makes, and that's how liberals end up identifying each other. Rage is the mating call. Anger, irrational hate is the mating call. They share it with as many people as possible. They are miserable people and they want you to be. They are trying to keep this country in total chaos and tumult with the never ending Drive-By Media reports of every disaster that is happening 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Everything is another disaster; everything's falling apart; everything's going to hell in a hand basket, from global warming to the war in Iraq to the Bush administration, everything is apocalyptic. There is nothing happy. There is no happiness in the left. They don't exude it, they don't inspire it, and they don't try. In fact, they don't want people to be happy because they think angry and rage and fear are the way they will get elected. And it may be. They succeeded in November in congressional and Senate races. So the antidote to all this rage and anger is good cheer and optimism. Some people don't have the guts to be optimistic because the daily bombardment of the apocalypse from global warming to the war in Iraq to the war on terror to we're spying to we're torturing to whatever, you hear this enough and you start half believing it if you're not strong.
So a candidate comes along and says, "You know what? I'm going to start talking about how great the country is. I'm going to be optimistic and positive. Well, maybe not because it's so unrealistic nobody will believe it." So they get cowed by the, again, false image and so forth that's been perpetrated by these lies coming daily from the Drive-By Media and the American left. But I just want to tell you, folks, there's no sin in happiness. A lot of people are afraid to be happy when they think there's so much misery. A lot of people are afraid to have a good time or feel guilty when they do because they think so many people aren't. I don't know if you know this or not, watching television, but there's a horse stuck waist deep in mud somewhere in Texas. They're out there trying to rescue the horse. Human beings are. Do you think the horses are going to stop eating today because one of their own is stuck in the mud? Think the horses are going to be depressed? No, they're horses. We are not horses. Sometimes people just have a fear of enjoying themselves when they think other people aren't. It's like you talk to people about the economy, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm doing great, but I'm worried about my neighbors, though. I keep hearing on the news that people are going to lose their jobs." They don't want to act happy, and so, doom and gloom, pessimism, they are infectious, too, and they more than that are limiting. They limit people's ability to feel happy and so forth or to exude it, anyway, because they think they'll offend somebody who's not happy, and the libs count on this.
bttt
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
No, because it isn't the role of our government. Many would be happy if they recived a job, house and retirement package from a Central Planning Office.
"I have the right to do whatever makes me happy! It says so in the Declaration of Independence."
Hold up a minute. That's not what the Declaration says.
A lot of people think that they have the right to pursue anything that makes them happy: sex, drugs, alcohol -- whatever satisfies their desires.
The Declaration of Independence does say that we have certain inalienable rights granted to us by God -- one of them being the right to pursue happiness. However, the signers of the Declaration were not talking about fun and pain-free living at any cost. Here's what they really meant:
The Founders' definition of "happiness" came from Sir William Blackstone's 1765 biblically based definition: "[God] has so intimately connected, so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former; and, if the former be punctually obeyed, it can not but induce the latter."
Happiness and eternal justice (obedience to God's law in creation) are inseparable. The founders of our nation understood "happy" to mean "blessed." They knew that true happiness depends on one's obedience to God's commands (check out Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5). God's commandments are not random demands, they are instructions from the One who made and sustains the universe.
The Declaration of Independence protects our inalienable right to pursue true justice and God's blessings -- not necessarily our every desire.
Very scary and true.
While the merciless dogmas of Muhammad remain there can never be peace upon earth - John Quincy Adams
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