[TheRealThing]

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.

This is seriously the best you got? At this late stage, you still can't define what you're even talking about. Pretty sad. As to the bolded--- I guess you didn't get the memo but, man was not granted the state of being fallen in nature, born dead. Death and sin passed on to all men through the sin of one man, Adam. Our bent to sin is in our nature, and is no more a choice than a dog's very predictable reaction to a mail man, it barks and sometimes it bites, we call this behavior and it is instinctive. The only choice man makes is when he chooses God in spite of his own fallen nature. And as Scripture tells us, that choice comes only through the foolishness of preaching of the Word and further, that it is The gift of God Himself, and in no case the result of works.

If I want to speak about why man is fallen from God's grace I go to Genesis and see what God has to say about the subject. If I want to speak about essential Liberty, I go to the man who coined the phrase and see what he had to say about it and in what historical context it was used. Libs like yourself, in desperation of any form of justification, are quite willing to steal another man's words, Franklin in this case, to propagate a lie. I just feel like Franklin was capable of saying what he meant, apart from your desperate distortions.

You dishonored freedom by choosing to stay home while patriotic men and women all around you went off to protect you, serving their country in the armed services. Franklin certainly did not shirk his duties in service to country, and that included commanding our troops during the French and Indian War, THE context of essential Liberty BTW. But like I said of your so-called debating skills, there is nothing that you cannot deny and facts are such bothersome restrictions to the liberal's freedom to revise history. But you further dishonor freedom by preaching your secular humanistic message in which you claim that liberty means that one has the right by law, to do that which is not right in both the eyes of God and the eyes of the American system of justice. The Scripture and the Constitution both proclaim such acts to be against nature. But America was intended to be different, she was to be a nation of men who recognize their unalienable rights come from God. Thus the proposition of self governance was always slave to men choosing to do what is right, and what is the go-to source to determine what is right? The Holy Bible.

That is what I choose to defend. While your defense is only and always that which is indefensible.

Franklin's letter, of which I am certain you cannot even make specific reference, much less make any claim to having read, was written to the Governor of Pennsylvania. It was he who like the liberal of today's world, thought to make a special legislative carve-out to the Penn family because frankly, he could not stop himself from kissing up to the elite.

Today's liberal in exacting like fashion, will very merrily through unfair and burdensome tax schemes rob the virtuous of this nation, and use the proceeds to buy the favor of those they court in a welfare for votes scheme. I will put that into different terms so that you will understand what I am saying. Call it essential Welfare, because you are 24/7 hair on fire, all-in to see those who work, robbed of their substance, so that it may be given to those who are for sale. All of which constitutes in today's political arena, the "purchase of a little individual power" by corrupt and misguided politicians who have shown an unswerving predilection to giving up our essential liberties as the price of purchase.

Now, I don't pretend to think that every person who voted for Trump this time can particularly articulate the argument. But the basic understanding of doing what's right is so fundamental to being an American, that men and women, following the dictates of their own 'consciences' (and that apart from the left's best attempts at propagandizing the nation through their dutiful right arm laughably referred to as the main stream media) knew by virtue of factual discernment and their God given spiritual instincts, that Trump was the right choice. And that prodding of conscience, is mostly all the common man in this nation ever had to guide him in the dispatch of his civic duties. Because as any semi-conscious student of American history knows, the founders were betting on that very force to keep America a viable society across time. Such is the basis for self governance. And such is the basis of our understanding that only through an adherence to Christian principles could America expect to remain free.