Mr. Kaepernick: Kneeling To Pray?

May 15, 2018

Mr. Kaepernick: Kneeling To Pray?

Once again, not to be mistaken for Tuesday's With Morrie, it's Tuesdays With Trump...

Continuing on from Mr. Kaepernick: Taking a Knee? Now that the historical record has been put in perspective.... flash forward to present day.

All persons are created equal - and yet, in their 1857 Dred Scott decision, SCOTUS decided that black people were property and therefore had no rights?

That divisive, politically motivated and egregious error in jurisprudence led to the civil war. And 153 years later, Dred Scott is on the other foot as all corporations are created equal to people??

Courtesy of Lanoo11 Deviantart

And Justice For All?? But only if you can afford her? Playing off a string (since the mid 1800's) of related, politically influenced cases with bizarre decisions...

In Citizens United 2010 SCOTUS decided that what is property - a corporation - has juristic person-hood and therefore, is the same as a person having 1st Amendment freedom of expression and rights.

Unfair and inequitable influence on the political process by the wealthy was already an issue. Now, limitless political contributions from big business through Super Pacs are legal because that is a freedom of expression they share with real people.

"We've seen a complete subversion of our political system... [unlimited money in politics] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president." - Ex POTUS Jimmy Carter

Subsequent to Citizens United, in SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision, if your employers religion or policies do not approve of your religious, sexual, recreational or birth control practices, they may now have the legal right to terminate or deny employment and or benefits, on those grounds.

"“the Court holds that commercial enterprises, including corporations, along with partnerships and sole proprietorships, can opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.” - SCOTUS Judge Ginsburg

Below, the prescience of Judge Ginsburg's opinion is demonstrated, as this sad state of affairs is already being tested in the courts. In 2016 a Federal judge ruled that LGBT transgender could be discriminated against. In 2018 that decision was reversed by an appellate court. TBD.

“There in an overriding interest, I believe, in keeping the courts ‘out of the business of evaluation the elate merits of differing religious claims’ or the sincerity with which an asserted religious belief is held."

"Indeed, approving some religious claims while demeaning others unworthy of accommodation could be ‘perceived as favoring one religion over another,’ the very ‘risk the Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.”

Coming full circle to where we started in Part 1, what everyone forgets, those who declared a war did so without a framework for a viable system, and those who fought and won the war, did so on promises and blind faith....

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 abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundations on such Principles and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to Them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. - 1776 The Declaration of Independence

Announcing an intention to govern oneself and setting up a viable system to govern are not the same thing. Emphasis added above, and one must read very carefully, as it is in that last sentence, "as to Them shall seem"...

That while many sleep in satiation, the ubiquitous "they" who can afford to influence and dictate terms, have quietly purchased and organized the governments powers to effect their own safety and happiness. Not yours, theirs. When the public gives its consent, and forfeits its agency, what else is one to expect?

Again, is this the Democracy and what so many fought and died, or took a knee for? Que up Mr. Reid and Mr. Kaepernick, because it's about all lives matter.

So the new "boss" demands firing these "SOB's" for a constitutional and basic human right?
No, no! This is about our future, so it would be in the collective interest for all of us to take a knee and pray with them.