re: #219 Wendell Zurkowitz (slave to the waffle light)

The Declaration is a statement about basic human rights, the Constitution is about the laws we make to uphold and protect them.

No, the DoI is not that at all. “Basic human rights” only included those white men who wrote it. And the original Constitution and Bill of Rights have been argued over time and amended. The DofI was what it was—a declaration of independence for propertied white men who wanted the yoke of England to be removed so they could pursue their own interests. Hell, we fought a war over it.

Basic human rights include everyone, of every race, sex, gender, etc, and those who wrote the DoI didn’t mean everyone, only themselves. It took 100 years to free slaves. It took 150 yrs for women to get the vote. And that was done yes, through lawsuits which were argued over time and into the modern age, and will be into the future, something those white men would have never considered in the 1700s. So, it’s always been a matter of interpretation, which as the country aged, mitigated in rights for everyone being slowly explored and added. It’s always a fight to get those same rights enjoyed by the Founders at the time who wrote it.

Both might have been documents of very smart white, educated and propertied men at the time, but it took time for the Constitution to be argued for those who were not included in that document’s intent of “liberty for all” when “all” never did include “all” of us until we fought for our rights to be included.