C’mon Longton City Hall - Get It Right

[CCarl]

I expect a few local Forum reader's have seen the Constitutional Proclamation that 'our' Mayor signed back in September. Am I the only one who read it word for word, and discovered how messed up it is? By now I expect City Hall to screw up, so seeing this proclamation just made me laugh.

For those of you who may be interested, take a look at it on the City's Facebook page, if it is still up, and read every sentence below "Constitution Week' in the center of the page, word-by-word. Now, did that make sense? See any grammatical problems? Or any confused statements?

Here is the problematic part of the proclamation the Mayor signed; "and urge all citizens to study the Constitution and reflect the privilege of being an American with all the rights and responsibilities which that privilege of being an American with all the rights and responsibilities which that privilege involves." Nice read, huh?!

Maybe the Mayor meant this; "and urge all citizens to study the Constitution and reflect ON the privilege of being an American with all the rights and responsibilities which that privilege involves." That, at least, gets rid of repetitive phrases. But I'm still not sure it makes sense.

Here are three sample proclamations provided by DAR;  https://www.dar.org/sites/default/files/members/committees/cw/pdf/PR-0007-pdf.pdf

I don't know if the screw up was made by the Mayor in an attempt to embellish the sample proclamation with her own 'wisdom', or if the screw-up came via the Esther Lowrey Chapter of the DAR. I could not find a webpage with samples from the Chapter.

But it doesn't make any difference where the screw-up originated. Why change a usable sample? But primarily, why not review the document for clarity and correctness before posting it? Or better yet, why did the Mayor and two councilpersons sign their names to it before making sure it was correct?

I know all that may seem petty, but it is absolutely BAD public relations for Longton. Coming from City Government this screw-up is far worse than the ramblings of that person who posts about Dying Longton.

It also worries me because it sounds like the Mayor believes our Rights are somehow derived from the Constitution, or from being Americans. Our Rights are Natural Rights, they are our birthright. Every human has those Rights, American or not. And there is no privilege about or associated with those Rights. Privilege can be revoked, Rights cannot. Those two words, 'Rights' and 'privileges', should not be held in the same thought.