Isn't the 4th of July a liberal holiday?

[Momo]

You might well think that.

You'd be wrong if you did.

But, you might well think it, just the same.

The Declaration of Independence was an assertion of individual Liberty and the right to self-governance. Liberty and self-governance may be words that Liberals like to think they support, but at the end of the day, they are only words. There's no self-governance in a Universal Health Care plan, and there's no Liberty in an Income Tax, especially not at punitive levels, and there's none of either in demonizing the producers of energy for not selling it below the cost to produce it.

Liberals are NOT the lovers of liberty they consider themselves being (and for you who are smiling at this so far, neither are Conservatives with their share of credit for Income Taxes and the War on Drugs).

No, July 4th is a Libertarian holiday. It's about Freedom, Liberty, Self-Ownership, which are all rock-solid fundamentals of Libertarian philosophy, our guiding principles. It's a document that basically says "We don't need a big government, we don't want a big government, we don't accept a big government." Big government is all Liberals ever talk about, how can it be YOUR holiday?

No. It's ours.

However, we do consider you free to celebrate it, and enjoy the freedom to totally misunderstand it that it gives you.

[skep-doc]

On Independence Day, there are no liberals, and there are no conservatives, we are Americans.

[NakedMoleRat0080]

It's interesting to see all the mindless bashing you've gotten from conservatives on this issue. Obviously they are ashamed to agree with you. 8^)

I think it's an interesting proposition. You are both right and wrong.

The rights outlined in the Declaration of Independence, the idea that people are born free, that they institute governments to voluntarily exchange a bit of this freedom for social order, and that governments no longer serve the people's needs, it is their right and DUTY to dissolve them and create a new government--those ideas are conservative ideas. At the time they were not new ideas, they were actually guaranteed to Brits by their own Constitution, beginning with the Magna Carta. Jefferson was only REMINDING the British Govt. of them.

But the idea that people can jerk the chain of government, hold it accountable, hold it to its responsibilities, that is liberal. Or that they can create a government 'of the people' that can better serve their needs than a king in a far-off country, that is certainly liberal. Wanting change is liberal just by definition. Conservatives want to 'conserve' the status quo.

But you know, it really shows you how far conservatism in the US has strayed from its roots that most conservatives today think a president is completely within his rights to ignore the constitutional limits to his power, to wiretap, to imprison people indefinitely without charges, to declare himself immune to laws he himself has passed, all that stuff. But only a REPUBLICAN president! If a Democrat were doing these things, you know conservatives would be screaming their heads off. Look at all the abuses they accused Clinton of that he didn't even do! And yet they are okay with the abuses of the Bush administration that they admit really did happen.