[The Urban Sombrero]

^^This is what you do. Not a word of your post is grounded in any thing of fact, but what's new right? Go back and look at your arguments. No sources, no logic, nothing of substance whatever. A rambling mishmash of historical and scriptural inaccuracies upon which you duct tape together weak analogy and the liberal house of cards of which you are so proud.

Those who value the absurd and vaporous notions of essential liberty and freedom of conscience are looking for something to hide behind. Men as you point out, while on this earth are free to play these games and imagine that they are somehow insulated from the inevitable truth. But God said that men will pray for the rocks to fall down upon them so they may be hidden from Him. But of course, in the day of His wrath there will be no way to hide from His face. And though all libs are in terminal denial about what follows here, they in like manner having been at long last exposed, could no longer hide their true agenda from the voter and got voted out of office, cake walked in fact, much to my extreme pleasure. Which BTW led to the additional bonus of further exposing the shallowness of Clown Schumer, San Fran Nan and last but not least, Sheila Jackson Lee for all to see. What a sad performance they put forth.

I have resisted over the past months, the urge to educate you, in asking you first to define what you think Franklin was referring to in to in his written remark involving essential liberty. Of course though I mentioned said quote first, his is the one singular quote on the subject in the historical record, and your only option as you immediately went to it when pressed for clarity and validity as to your errant claims regarding his meaning. I wanted you to declare yourself to that end, but that has proven to be impossible. As you are either too unsure of yourself or you're just trying to be opaque or more likely both. So let me help you.

The concept of essential liberty as it truly exists, is at the corporate level, not the individual. Essential liberty as I told you at the outset, (and of course it went right over your head) had to do specifically with national defense, and came in the form of chastisement by no less than Franklin himself, as it applied specifically and only to the Pennsylvania Assembly of 1755 and it's charter given at the behest of the people and then only to the following situation. The framework was the governmental responsibility to insure both liberty and security during the French and Indian War. Here was what the indignant Benjamin Franklin having been put into the position of arbiter actually said; “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”

The Penn family, who had vast holdings of land in Pennsylvania, were trying to dodge the justly exacted taxes imposed on them by the Assembly. Funds which were needed for defensive efforts on the frontier to repel the French and Indian incursion. Franklin found himself being maneuvered into a choice between giving up the moral standards of effective governance or providing special favors to the Penn family and in so doing, barter off the very liberty the Assembly was charged to defend. Hence the words, "purchase a little temporary Safety"

The last application which should be made of Franklin's quote would be to that of individual civil rights. Rather, liberty and security were coequal concerns of the people, corporately. But in no case could we expect to survive via a tradeoff of liberty for security as was the case in the Penn family's attempt to avoid taxation, the rightful purview of the legislature.

The specter of the afore mentioned cannibalistic anti-logic endures to this very day, as the people of this great land find themselves again in need of a champion. Under the insistence of liberal legislators and activists such as the imminent Reverend Al and of course folks like yourself, the people have been defrauded of Franklin's vision of essential liberty. How? Because like the Penn family, special interest groups have usurped the will of the people and the common good of the people, by asking for and receiving legislative carve outs, byes of all manner, goodies and taxpayer provided gifts, quid pro quo fashion in a destructive tradeoff for their votes. The proper name for this disgusting pickle is Identity Politics and is the stock-in-trade of the Democrat.

In other words though you will deny it, all the libs in true lemming fashion, have lined up behind the misbegotten notion that essential liberty is a right. That is why you or they cannot defend or define it. [attachment=o3507] Feelings.

Thank you for your brief remarks.

The quote by Franklin neither defines nor illumines this discussion of essential liberty.

Jefferson's "unalienable" means that which cannot be given or taken away. In other words, that which is essential, fundamental.

A civil government striving to maintain essential liberty, honor freedom of conscience, does not stand in the place of God, or church, or deacon board, or religious entity. In my view, grounding a provision allowing gays to have marriage recognized by the civil authority in equal protection under the law does in no way impede the Church from opposing it or condemning it. It in no way usurps God's authority, as it makes no moral comment, but simply suggests the practice itself is covered by essential liberty ("pursuit of happiness, liberty").

Does the Creator grant to human beings a freedom that they then use to say "No" to him? Obviously. Does that "No" to the Creator have consequences? I believe it does. Dire ones. Do these dire consequences, then, free up the religious man to use civil authority to interfere with essential liberty? No, they do not.

Smug shenanigans aside, TRT, you dishonor freedom by playing games with a principle that undergirds our great documents by localizing it within a single quote. You would shrink and distort reality to go about your way feeling as if you had put liberalism in its place. As if a letter pertaining to the Penn family, a localized issue, settled a debate about a universal principle.