Matt Taibbi Quotes
For a country founded on the idea that rights are inalienable and inherent from birth, we’ve developed a high tolerance for conditional rights and conditional citizenship.
Taibbi, Matt. The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap. Spiegel & Grau, 2014.
As a woman, Anthony was found guilty of “illegal voting” in the Presidential election of 1872. Fining her $100 the judge asked if she had anything to say. This was her reply.
This quotation was a slight paraphrase from Article 14 of the Republican Party Platform which had been adopted unanimously at the Chicago Party Convention on May 17, 1860. This was the convention where Lincoln was nominated. It is not known who originally drafted Article 14, although Lincoln's agents were very active in the platform drafting process. In his later campaign speech, Lincoln ran on the Party Platform.
Rights belong to the individual according to Rawls, not to the community of subgroups. Justice demands that the rights of the individual may not be sacrificed for the supposed benefit of the community or entire society. Not all agree with this, but it tends to differentiate Western cultural values from most others in the world where group, community or national benefit
Jefferson had deliberately modified John Locke’s phrase “life, liberty and property.
Matthew C. Taibbi is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. He is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, author of several books, co-host of Useful Idiots, and publisher of a newsletter on Substack.
