Maggie's Farm

Piers is one smug, arrogant asswipe. He enjoys OUR constitutional protections that he would be denied were he in his native land, a country (and indeed a continent) that has been destroyed by the very nonsensical government usurpation of rights he insists we adopt here.

Piers assumes that he has ridiculed Mr. Shapiro by making him look like some type of conspiracy theory nut job who worries that our government may some day become so tyrannical that its citizens would be justified in revolting against its leaders. Poor Piers forgets that the Revolutionary War was just such an instance - colonists engaging in an armed revolt due to the tyrannical acts of Great Britain.

Perhaps, Mr. Shapiro should have handed Piers a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Here's the pertinent text describing the right and the duty of the citizens to overthrow a government that has usurped the rights of the people, a situation that we may be coming very close to if indeed we are not already there:

"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.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."