By Ina Hughs
Posted August 22, 2012 at 3 a.m.
"Our rights come from God and nature, not from government."
Those words brought rousing ovations in Norfolk, Va., as Paul Ryan accepted his candidacy as Mitt Romney's running mate.
But even high-octane tea drinkers from the Grand Old Party surely don't intend for our government to renege on its responsibility to ensure not only our civil rights, but our safety, our productivity, our well-being and our freedom.
How silly to say government isn't the arbiter of our rights as Americans, the protector and safeguard of democracy. Maybe Ryan wants to play on the emotional issues of gay rights and reproduction rights, both of which the Republican platform seeks to convince Americans are anti-their-religion and anti-Mother-nature.
They like to posture government as a bogeyman that strips us of our freedom, religious and otherwise. But setting up a government that gives us all — rich, poor, black, white, old, young, powerful, marginal, majority, minority, liberal, conservative, born-again Baptist or Wiccan — the right to pursue happiness and live in peace was the patriots' dream long ago and what we have fought to sustain in every war since.
Without government's intervention and participation, how else will we know, for a simple example, that meat at the supermarket is safe to eat? Can we really depend on the kindness of others to make sure our medications have been tested and come with proper warnings?
What about our right to drive highways and interstates knowing others zooming along beside us have been checked out for basic skills, and should someone bash into us, they have coverage to help us with damages they caused? Rely on "human nature" to see to such requirements?
Besides, both God and nature send mixed messages. Remember when one American right here in Knoxville heard God tell him to go to the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on Kingston Pike and shoot up the congregation during Sunday worship? Not long ago, a whole bunch of white people's God convinced them that black people were inferior, and they had scripture from the Good Book to prove it. Think about godly people who, except for government intervention, wanted to deny women full citizenship, the right to ownership, a place at the head of the table.
Appointing nature — human or Mother — as dispenser and guardian of our civil rights instead of a government would undo the whole concept of democracy. What happens when human nature's inclinations clash, as certainly they do in a complex, diverse society like ours? Left to a certain segment of our population's "nature," guns would be outlawed. Plus, I doubt anybody could convince me that the God I know and believe in wants his children to walk around carrying rapid-fire assault weapons. Somebody might ought to tell Ryan that it's government, not God or nature, that gives us our rights as Americans.
It's a catchy sound bite, but you cannot have 313 million people turned loose under the same flag and expect them to grant and protect rights as defined by their different religious beliefs and their various definitions of acceptable human behavior.
It reminds me of the story about the city guy who says to the farmer, "This is a wonderful place God gave you."
"Yeah," says the farmer. "But you should've seen the conditions it was in when it was just God looking after it."
The grass may not be greener on the other side after all. Statements like this are pure fertilizer — for weeds.
Source: Knoxville News Sentinel
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