[TheRealThing]

Uh, Holmes, best check again. "Prooftexting or proof texting" both acceptable.

Essential liberty is a principle undergirding pursuit of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, akin to "unalienable" rights, as in fundamental, essential. And, you're as in error about it as you are about "prooftexting."

I notice you don't address your "Nathan Jessup" lunacy about how folk who haven't been in the Armed Services can't criticize the actions of the Armed Services. Word is, though, you can't handle the truth.

As for freedom of conscience, just type it in there, Holmes. The definition'll pop right up. In America, a person is free to choose to be homosexual, free to call it an alternate and moral lifestyle. The civil government protects that freedom, and "equal protection under the law" applies.
There is no construction by which you can sling in some long, long, long post yammering about God's authority and how civil government originates from God's authority because the freedom of choice was given Man by God, and is honored by God, and preserved under wise government, lest overzealous men transgress where angels fear to tread.

LOL, what a major dodge.

The term essential Liberty, is attributable to only one man, Benjamin Franklin, and is akin to nothing else. He used it in a letter to the Colonial Governor in arbitrating a very specific legislative dispute arising out of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Said letter was written during the French and Indian war, in which the term essential Liberty originally appeared. It dealt specifically with the right of a duly elected legislature to tax accordingly, lands in Pennsylvania in this case, in order to provide the fundamental benefit of safety, or more to the point, national defense. The Assembly was stalling on the necessary appropriations of same in order to force the Governor's hand. He was a puppet of the Penn family and as such vetoed legislation applicable to Penn family land holdings every time it had come up. The term is not an individual rights catchall, and certainly not in the manner in which you libs try to use it. It has to do with the authority of elected legislatures to levy taxes and other such charges of the people's business. In a word it is 'corporate' in scope. But then, I am certain you would tell Franklin he's wrong too.

But like I said, if just saying something made it so you'd be unstoppable. That is if you actually had the courage to give us your own discourse on such matters, which you obviously do not. I don't need your guidance to look something up but thanks all the same.

And here's to January 20, the day the yammering of Scalia, Franklin, and the new Supreme Court appointee/appointees is carried on in remembrance of great men gone on, along with those to come in preservation of the conservative tradition. And I can only hope that it will bother you a fraction as much as I think it will. :biggrin: