This conversation is so stupid it hurts. All dogma, no thought.
Supporting one right over another doesn't mean you support the trampling of either. Some fundies were rather upset about the closet reconstruction of the nation's Articles of Confederation into the Constitution.
People scream for the government to stay out of their business...unless there is a hurricane or oil spill or ILLEGAL immigrants or some other reason the government should or could have helped them but didn't.
Everyone points back to some infantile notion of what it all meant back in 'the day', when, you know, things were better/worse and stuff meant more/less.
Look, just because some old rich guys got together and told some other old rich guys to fuck off, doesn't mean the result was 'perfect'. It's been redone, amended, broken, bent, fingered, spit on, valorized to near demagogue status, been the propagandized by industry and the people 'of the people and for the people'. It's an inanimate object. It cannot think for us, and though it can be a preface or an affix, we still have to use our minds. Those old rich guys? Yeah...they had a cultural touchstone as well. Before they made the one we call our regime. They had the sense to question, ponder, strike boldly for new standards, and ultimately come up with the best combination of what was and what they thought should be.
It was not perfect. It also was not cognizant of the changes to come. Is this making sense? It, and by 'it' I mean everything we tritely attribute paternal status to, came from people. Real people. Real people have flaws. It has flaws. We have flaws. One does not correct the other.
We have to be active with it, not refer to it biblically and absolutely, but also not cheaply, flippantly, or dismissively. What we have in this nation only works if we work with it.
This means no right goes all-the-way. Nothing is set purely in stone, no matter how much weight we give it or want it to have. If America is to remain dynamic, then it requires the carrot, the stick, the speech, the promise, the lie, the good intentions, selfishness and even jingoism at times.
So what if you cannot ultimately express your ultimate freedom and tell ultimately anyone you want that they cannot give you paper or electronic currency for shit made in China, coated in lead, deep fried, served on white bread and denoted 'gourmet' by a less than honest sign. Slippery slopes should be designated as such, and when something of importance slides down them then used to argue against it. We cannot escape our roles, difficult as it may be in this day and age, in making 'it' work. We still have to think things through, and not simply to the proximity of an absolute.
The right to tell person x they cannot buy product y because of conceptions of race...race doesn't mean anything when you are having lunch, even if you're allergic to the idea that someone declares it meaningless beforehand. Americans have rights, remember? Individuality goes both ways, and your right to be a bigot does not trump another's right to eat a bigot's sandwich.
