Read the Declaration of Independence recently? The Founders had some very specific beefs with their government. They had considered themselves Englishmen, and had brought their grievances before their ruler many times, already. In doing so, they simply and doggedly insisted on their rights as Englishmen. Nothing revolutionary, nothing remarkable, nothing really new at all: just the long-established rights of Englishmen, viewed from the perspective of colonists being denied those rights.
In doing so, they were conservatives, promoting the long history of the liberalization of rule that had been making progress in England since Runnymede. Look especially at the “long train of abuses” of good governance expected by English subjects/citizens in the 18th century. As Edmund Burke said in a speech before the British Parliament on March 22, 1775,
“…the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation, which still I hope respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles.”
On this Memorial Day, 2006, I feel compelled to ask myself, “What have our servicemen and women who have died for their country died for?” This is not a flip question, nor is it in any way a denial of the greatness of their sacrifice or the worthwhileness of their values. It is a question for us, the living, to contemplate. Stated another way, are we worthy of their sacrifice?
What are the values that are the heart and soul of America? No, not the flag-waving, spechifying values that we all (even the blatant quislings among us, the ACLU and such as Jean Fraud sKerry) claim whenever it comes time to speak of patriotism. What are the real core values we send our best to die to preserve?
And what does that say of us?
Look, really LOOK, closely at the “long train of abuses” listed below. I’ve made it easy by bolding that section. Think, really THINK about them.
Many, though not yet all, of the abuses the colonists laid before King George have close analogues in the abuses the Federal government heaps upon citizens (or is it “subjects” now?) today. We mostly don’t even feel the chains upon us today, because we have—mostly—lived our entire lives with a steady encroachment upon the freedoms, the rights our forefathers suffered and bled and died to purchase.
Consider just one—of many—application of “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good” to the current scene. Last week, under the leadership of our own “King” George, the Senate refused to defend the sovereignty of the United States and the security of its people, when it passed its version of an “immigration” bill allowing millions of alien invaders to suck at the public teat and weaken the republic in a multitude of ways.
Just one example among many of a “ruler” refusing laws that are good for its people. “King” George even refuses to contemplate enforcing the laws that have been on the books for his entire ‘reign” as regarding border security and alien invaders.
And he and his cronies in the Senate (and many among the House of Representatives, as well) feel no need whatsoever to listen to the pleas of their subjects in this matter.
But that’s just one example. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to read, really READ, the Declaration of Independence sometime between today and July Fourth. After reading it, correlate analogues of abuses by the Federal government today to corresponding abuses listed by the Declaration of Independence.
Then ask yourself, “What am I asking those in uniform to sacrifice for? My comfortable lifestyle in the wealthiest nation on earth? Or am I willing to become a co-defender of liberty and thus deserve at least a shadow of their sacrifice?
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
— John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Noted at Committees of Correspondence and Conservative Cat.
Do note that in saying “What are the real core values we send our best to die to preserve?/And what does that say of us?” I am committing an error of logic called a fallacy of division, wherein a general characteristic of a whole entity is attributed to each and every element of that entity. It’s a polemic device, in this case. Your individual values aren’t being questioned, unless you choose to actually engage in a lil self-examination, that is…
.. the Senate refusing to defend the sovereignty of the United States has been the ultimate for many of us who formerly believed in the goodness of some our politicians…The
?ruler? refusing laws that are good for its people…well that has become nothing short of a farce. Excellent read and brilliant analogies drawn…Let us pray our soldiers are in fact making the ultimate sacrifice for when we turn this country around and respect Liberty for what it was truly meant to be!..whew!..end of mah rant!..:)