“The American notion of freedom transcended the political realm and in fact extended to every major category of human relationships, including those between employer and employee, clergyman and layman, husband and wife, parent and child, public official and citizen. Americans believed that, as of July 4, 1776, all men were created equal, and that any impairment of a man’s equality was destructive of his liberty also.”

ABSOLUTELY ! We hold this truth to be self evident. There are 3 philosophical systems of law that corporeal man has devised and recognized - Natural Law, Legal Positivism, and Legal Realism. Natural Law is that which defines that which is - gravity, physics, fiscal law, etc. Legal Positivism is what ever man says is law is law. For example if man says economic law is Keynesian Economic - then it is. Legal Realism is what ever man thinks he can get away with at the time (Amerika's current judicial system for example) The subject equality (before the law) is a categorical faction of natural law, as was the rest of the liberty addressed jurisprudence of the de jure America's Constitutional limiting Representative Republic. Keynesian Economics and the current Amerikan judicial system, as well as the rest of the tyrannical despots' non-Natural Law applications will continue to cause caos, pain, suffering, poverty, war, death, and immorality at freedom and liberty's expense.

So Mike does your love of liberty include gay and lesbian rights etc. Or as my friends so no rules at all.

Yes, Liberty is as radical an idea as it was back in 1776 when all born were subjects of Crown, Pope, and Magistrate. The rights of individuals were not recognized -- all were to obey the dictates of church and state or suffer their wrath via human hands. Waffler, there is no such thing as gay/lesbian rights no more than there is such a thing as latino or black rights. No one has more right than another -- all are equal under the law, all are born with the natural-born rights to live one's life in one's own way as long as it does not infringe the same rights of others. What Waffler is alluding to is special privileges of certain groups built upon the prejudice that they are somehow debilitated in their natural state and thus deserving of our propping them up by government decree. The solution to the evils of enslaving a race is not to enslave all equally. The solution to protecting the Liberty of a nation is not to take liberty away from all until one is able to 'prove' worthy of the power. This is the con of statism/collectivism/socialism/fascism/communism.