Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we’re dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights. If politicians can take or distribute them, then they’re not “inalienable” and they’re not “rights.” We don’t have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins. And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.
He’s not wrong. And what’s so chilling is he’s NOT WRONG. We claim superiority in the world for our democracy and how we have rights for our citizens. Yet clearly, we do not. The whim statement is perfectly accurate.
(Hat tip: kottke.org)
