“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

The leader of the civil rights movement in this country had no problem with our founding documents. In fact, Dr. King based his movement on the Liberty promised in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States.

Too bad Barack Obama, the most visible beneficiary of an America living out the true meaning of our creed, rejects it as “fatally flawed”:

“I think we can say that the Constitution reflected a (sic) enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day and that the framers had that same blind spot…[and] [the U.S. Constitution] reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”

Was MLK blind too? Or did those that suffered under Jim Crow understand that the greatest positive civil right was Liberty from government doing things “on our behalf”.

The Democrat nominee for President has a different view:
“…the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you. But it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

Negative liberties?

Let’s read the Preamble to the world’s oldest governing document:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Securing the blessings of Liberty is negative to one that wants more government power, but it is precisely the restraint on that power that is the secret to the historic success of the citizens of the United States, especially including millionaire author, Barack Obama.

Yet, he trashes The Movement that secured Blessings of Liberty for him:

“And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused…”

Lawyer Thurgood Marshall was too “court-focused” when he filed the complaint for Brown against the Board of Education?

I think not.

Obama rejects the creed King embraced, re-produced here in it’s entirety:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Obama has the blind spot. What he doesn’t see, and what makes our nation unique, is that We the People own all the civil rights as gifts from God. We the People’s Founding Fathers form governments and give them limited powers. Obama wants a new creed in which government, even through the courts, has first dibs on the fruits of our labor:

“I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and — and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay. But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society… As radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution…”

He wants to be a founding father of a new creed that breaks the government free from constraints in limiting liberty, but what about Life and the Pursuit of Happiness?

As an Illinois State Senator, he was instrumental in twice preventing the passage of a law that would have required that life-saving medical care be afforded to babies that are born alive following botched abortions; opposed outlawing the barbaric third-trimester procedure of partial birth abortion; considered the question of when human beings obtain human rights as above his pay grade and characterized the birth of an unexpected child as “punishment.”

Contrast that with the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee’s advocacy for special needs children, such as her infant son with Down Syndrome.
Obama pursues happiness by seeking to empower government.

The Founder’s considered the right to retain private property as the key to Liberty and happiness pursuits. The Democrat nominee and his party want dibs on your income via higher taxes, and speaking of happiness pursuits, just yesterday, Barack promised to bankrupt the coal industry.

How happy can you be lacking the civil rights to life and less income in a cold house?

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

Legal Editor for The Minority Report and Race 4 2008

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” – The Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts