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To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (134866)	11/16/2001 9:28:26 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Bill is a greased pig asking us to "catch him". Whether or not we bother to dig up old post to catch him, it is more then evident to all concerned that he is still a greased pig. If stocks show any signs of disconnecting with reality, Bill will be right back in there talking about unstoppable tornados. And when they crash, he will once again deny having said any such thing.

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (134866)	11/17/2001 11:17:56 PM
From: craig crawford	Respond to of 164684

Why the Declaration of Independence matters worldnetdaily.com If anything can be certain in history, it is that without the civic creed summarized in the opening of the Declaration, the United States would not exist as a free country. The Declaration gives the reasons for which the War of Independence was fought and expresses the motivation that enabled that war to be won. Since that day, the Declaration has been an indispensable foundation for a series of important struggles for justice in America, including of course the abolition of slavery. Without the Declaration, I believe, these struggles would not have been won. ............................................................................................................................... How were uncountable masses of people held enthralled by handfuls of people through most of history and in most places in the world? It was not, typically, by the use of overwhelming force. Small groups of people never have enough force to overwhelm the masses. Masters succeed only when they enchain the minds and spirits of those subject to them. Around the Jefferson Memorial is inscribed a famous quote of Jefferson's: "I swear eternal enmity against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." This recognizes the crucial insight into the real source of enslavement, that slavery is not a matter of physical shackles, but of spiritual, mental and psychological chains. ............................................................................................................................... This insight into the source of human dignity provides the only truly effective motivation for the downtrodden to fight for their liberty. A people aware of the justice of its claims to liberty will find the courage do what is necessary no matter what the threat. This is not merely a pious imagination -- it is a statement of the actual course of American history. Every significant struggle for justice in America, from the very beginning, including the fights against slavery, for civil rights, for women's rights and for workers' rights, was led by people who pointed to the Declaration of Independence and challenged the nation to do what was right by those principles. The Declaration has been the source of the courage that was required to fight those battles. ................................................................................................................................. Sometimes they argue that the hypocrisy of the Declaration's assertion of human equality is shown by the fact that its principal author, Jefferson, was a slave owner. In fact, however, even this shows the power that the truth can have if we are willing to speak it. Jefferson, and with him the leading lights of the Founding generation, had the decency to acknowledge what few in the course of human history before that era had ever acknowledged -- that slavery was wrong. Speaking this truth was the first step toward changing the life of America -- just as acknowledging the principles of justice is always the first step toward doing justice. This is the glory of the Founders -- despite having the power and opportunity to replicate in America the despotisms of Europe, they instead embraced and proclaimed a new understanding of politics. That understanding acknowledged in human nature itself, formed by God in a decision beyond the reach of human power or rejection, the basis for a universal claim to dignity and rights. ............................................................................................................................... Without the wise compromises of the Founders, too easily dismissed as mere hypocrisy, the decades that followed would not have led to an enormous crisis of conscience. But it was precisely this crisis that eventually made the nation face the injustice of slavery in order to uproot it from the national soul. ............................................................................................................................... The Declaration is not merely a powerful tool for spiritual and moral motivation -- it is probably an irreplaceable one. Those who propose removing what has been the Gibraltar of American resistance to tyranny don't even bother to propose a viable substitute. I think it would be the greatest folly in the world to wander away from such a blessing on the advice of those who are capable of seeing nothing but racism or sexism in a document that has done more than any other merely human creation to end both. The opponents of the use of the Declaration in our schools are consistently people who are quite facile in expressing their resentments but offer the blueprint of no other edifice of human spirit, intellect and moral understanding which they would put in the place of the great principle they urge us to abandon.