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Remembering Why We Celebrate

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America:

When 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

I Have a Nightmare…

Those that know me, know that I have a vivid imagination so take this post for what you will…

Reading the story about the riot police in Quincy, IL being called out to protect the President from the grandmother terrorists of the local Tea Party got my mind to working.  I then found another story about military at Ft. Knox performing exercises in preparation for Tea Party terrorists.   At this point a “what if?” scenario began to form in my overactive little brain.  NERD ALERT: I love “what if?” scenarios both from a historical perspective (What if the Germans had not let most of the British army escape from Dunkirk at the beginning of WWII) as well as possible future situations (What if irrefutable evidence is discovered proving that man evolved from apes?).  They require one to view the world through multiple paradigms.

Anyway, back to my scenario.  In light of how the Dems used every method they could dream up to shove their health care agenda down the throats of the American people despite the public’s overwhelming disapproval and their suggestions that they will use the same tactics to push through other parts of their agenda (cap-and-trade, amnesty, bank bailout bill, etc.), I do not think that they will go quietly this November in what even Democratic pollsters predict will be a bloodbath for Democrats.  So what if the Democrats realize that come September that they really are about to get creamed at the ballot box and they have been unable to enact all of their progressive initiatives to transform this country into Utopia?  Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel stated in early 2009 that you “never want a serious crisis to go to waste…”  At the time, he was speaking about the dreadful economic situation, but let’s consider a very different scenario for a moment.

• What if there were a significantly dramatic and horrific terrorist attack on American soil in mid- to late October?  What if the terrorist attack is not by muslim extremists but instead by a white supremacist group much like the Oklahoma City federal building bombing in 1995?
• What if the President and Congress decided, that as a matter of public safety, the elections scheduled only a couple of weeks later would need to be postponed citing threats from other domestic terrorists who expressed anger at the current government?  Would you support this decision?
• What if the terrorist(s) was linked to the Tea Party movement in the subsequent weeks and that the government performs admirably in its clean-up and investigation of the disaster?
• If the elections are then held in February, 2011 after successful capture of the perpetrator(s) and passage by Congress of several laws that make us all safer from domestic terrorists, will you still feel the fervor to “vote the bums out”? Think you might vote differently for your Representative and/or Senator than you would today?  Would you even make it out to vote that day?

The point of this mental exercise is not to suggest that such a terrible event would actually happen but rather to explore one’s willingness to stay true to their stated beliefs in the face of unprecedented circumstances.  Many of those on the political Left claim that, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration took away many of our civil liberties under the guise of national security and a shell-shocked public stood idly by while it happened.  While I do not believe that Bush & Cheney had some nefarious plan behind the Patriot Act, it is worth noting that we have far less privacy from our government today than we did prior to 9/11 and we gave up it up with far less outcry than we have shown with regard to health care.

So I say to all the Tea Partiers and those currently expressing outrage at the current government, will you remain resolute in your stance against incumbent politicians regardless of any short-term circumstances that shake our core?

And to those who think the policies of the current administration and congress are the greatest thing to come along since the New Deal and would leap at the first opportunity to demonize the Tea Party movement, I will leave you with one final wrinkle in my little “what if?” game:

• What if undeniable truth was uncovered that the terrorist incident mentioned above had been staged?

I’m just saying…

Exhalting Among Greatness

I know that our elected representatives in Congress are smarter than us common folk, but I did not realize that an island could tip-over and capsize due to the massive weight of all of its populace.

Rep. Hank Johnson begins dropping knowledge on us all at about the 1:20 mark of this video.  He is questioning Admiral Robert Willard about 8,000 troops and their families being stationed on the unbalanced island of Guam.

I am smarter today, thanks to Rep. Johnson. Thank you sir.  You do the people of your district proud.

So let it be written…

Healthcare insurance reform passes 219-212.  Obama will likely sign into law tomorrow or Tuesday. Mark this day and keep copies of all the promises that were made about how great this will be for us.  I feel certain we will be revisiting this topic a bit more down the road.  Unfortunately, no one will take solace in saying, “we told you so”.

Reconciliation bill passed 220-211.  Now it goes to Senate where they expect to pass it this week.  Let’s see if the Republicans have any aces to play.

Stupak Sells Out

Rep. Bart Stupak and his band of merry anti-abortion Democrats just announced they are switching their “no” votes to “yes” because they were promised that Obama would use an executive order to prevent federal funding for abortions (which I guess means, it IS in the Senate bill).

Ahhh, the Stupak group is yet more Democrats getting duped by Obama and a Democratic leadership that will tell them anything and everything to get these monstrosity passed because they know it gives them so much power that the ends justify the means.  If the folks they bribed don’t end up getting all the stuff they promised?  Oh well, thanks for sacrificing yourself for the “greater good” of the Party.

All of these folks are stupid little pawns.  How does it taste???