Last Thursday Melissa and I catered a Seder in Hollywood. Matza soup, Gefilte fish, the works. And as the dinner ceremony commenced, we were asked to dip our parsley into the bowl of salt water, the symbol of tears, to remind us, as it reminded the Jews for centuries.
“We do this to remember those tears in Egypt,” the leader said, “But if we don’t, we might be tempted to go back.”
And I thought — that’s exactly what the United States is going through. Too many of us have forgotten why our Constitution is so important, why we must remember what it took for our forefathers to write it as “a list of negative liberties” (according to Obama).
Our Constitution is not about negative liberties, but limited government. We are part of a great experiment in human liberty. Until 1776, the government told us what our rights were, and took them back whenever it served the purposes of the party or the king. Since then, immigrants came from all over to escape the violence of petty dictators, or the suffocation of socialist/communist systems, to reach what Reagan called “the last best hope of man on earth.” USA.
Don’t let anyone tell you that Socialism or Communism is going to “save” this country. They’re comparing our admittedly flawed capitalist system to utopia, which literally means “no place.” They are forgetting, not only history, but current events, logic, political theory, and the American dream of liberty for all. They’ll never convince the holocaust survivor, the Cuban immigrant or the displaced non-Muslim. They know better, and so should we.
If we’re not careful, we will forget, and ruin the great experiment.