Rights & Mr. Dooley

In the beginning of our Republic, we listed out some inalienable rights granted by our creator when we were created, rules for governance, and tacked on 10 specific rights the government was not to mess with.

One of them being, by the way, the right of the people to keep and bear arms.  But I digress.

Knowing Mr. Alinsky's ideology, I doubt he read into the following words what I did, even though I found them in his book.

Apparently there was a Chicago humorist and columnist back in the early 20th century named Finley Peter Dunne who wrote articles from the viewpoint of a fictional Chicago Irishman named Mr. Dooley.

And Mr. Dooley, in one of them, apparently said the following:

Don't ask f'r rights.  Take thim.  An don't let anny wan give thim to ye.  A right that is handed to ye fer nawthin' has somethin' the matter with it.  It's more thin likely it's only a wrong turned inside out.   -- Emphasis, mine.

Keep that in mind when our governing class makes up "rights" such as health care for us.

I haven't read any other words from Dunne that I know of, so I don't know what the rest of his writing is like.  But I like that bit in the context of our Constitution.

In Alinsky's context of so-called "social justice" and equal outcomes, emphasis on democracy over republican structure and amoral tactics, not so much.  As you might suspect there'll be a review of Rules for Radicals coming up when this slow reader (and I'm reading this one even more slowly) finally finishes the relatively short book.

But I just ordered Mr. Dooley in Peace and War ... the collected Mr. Dooley columns.  It was only a couple of bucks and I have a feeling there's more than a few Irish Will Rogers gems in there.