Independence Day - 2012

"...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."  Thomas Jefferson et al

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This is the part that doesn't get quoted very much.    It seems right to display today the image of the greatest American rebel.  pl

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2012/07/enjoy-your-independence-day

Comments

[r whitman]

Got up this morning and went outside and put up my American flag. I am proud and happy to be an American in spite of all the dumb politicians in Austin and Washington.

Later on today to celebrate I will reread the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

[Cal]

It's past time to "alter and abolish".
This isn't a sovereign people's government.... it's a international shopping bazaar where anyone with 30 pieces of silver can buy a law, a war, a politician, anything they want.

[SAC Brat]

This has the crew written all over it: Acme Anvils https://sites.google.com/site/anvilsave/

Anvil ringing touches the inner Huck Finn in me. Makes me want to throw a dead cat at a politician.

As for "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed", didn't the Soviet Union find out about this first-hand? I'm just afraid the Corporatists will make the Communists look humane in the transition if it was tried here.

[Matthew]

Col: I think Professor Daniel Robinson described George Washington best, simply as The Greatest American.

[turcopolier]

Matthew

Several of our ancestors (mine and Maureen's)served under him. I believe they would have agreed. They stuck with him to the end. pl

[Alba Etie]

We can start taking back our country by a Constututional Amendment that overturns Citizens United .

[zanzibar]

Pat

Best Wishes!

In December 2008 as we were reeling from the financial crisis you had a thread to discuss the “political effect that various economic "futures" might have on the development of history in the next decades.”

I commented then that “I believe we are heading towards a political tsunami when the effects of this unprecedented reflation manifest itself. Either our people will believe that central planners and government are omniscient and what's good for the plutocracy is good for them and cede what limited "liberty" they have or we have the next Jeffersonian revolution.”

On this Independence Day I feel we cannot have another Jeffersonian revolution at least for another century if at all. We citizens have become far too apathetic to our role in politics and are quite content ceding our bedrock liberty so that government can just "take care of us". We have lost the notion that sovereignty lies with us and it is our duty to exercise it. We have become statists far removed from the vision that Jefferson had of a free people. I don’t think dear Thomas Jefferson would get 5% of the national vote today with his platform.

Rebellion? An occasional riot maybe, which will be put down harshly by our militarized police forces. Look at the participation rate at any demonstration, let alone an election. With our national security state on steroids bulking up by the day it is going to take a complete change of our contemporary character before there is the will and fortitude to remake the government in the decades to come.

[Lee]

Happy 4th to all the folks here!

[Matthew]

Col: I've never looked into my geneology. I fear that my ancesters were at Bunker Hill....marching up!

[GR]

Does anyone ever go over the list of injuries and usurpations, which the drafters of the Declaration used as justification for the Revolution?
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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 of 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.

[The Twisted Genius]

Paul Akers, the editorial editor of the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star, wrote this today as the lead in to his annual printing of the Declaration of Independence. He writes of that passage in the document that most moves me.

"The Birth of the United States of America 236 years ago today was a happy occasion, but it was no fairy tale--and many of the 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence did not live happily ever after. Some lost everything they owned and died bankrupt. Some emerged from prison broken men. Others saw war's tribulations claim wives and children. Nine forfeited their own lives for liberty.

Reflect on the last sentence of the Declaration, reprinted below--the words about pledging lives and fortunes. As often as not, the pledges were called in. But no one lost the third treasure laid at freedom's altar. Whether well-to-do or impoverished, surrounded by family or cruelly shorn of loved ones, each Signer passed on with his sacred honor intact and shining.

Today, amid the entirely appropriate hoopla, consider that in a republic, now as then, there is no living happily ever after. Preserving and perfecting our freedom is a job from which no generation can retire, lest it give up the third, and best, treasure."

Happy Independence Day to all.

[jon]

Say it, brother. A free people always chafe under their government. And this is as it should be. We must always examine the bargain between what is offered and what is given. And the bargain should always improve the lot of the citizenry.

On this day, I reflect on the lot of my namesake, a Colonel in the Revolution, whose grave is still visited by the children of his town. My life is not his, but I hope I retain some of his courage and devotion, and can somehow live up to his sense of honor.

[Richard Armstrong]

Somehow I don't think that Mr. Jefferson had corporations in mind when he wrote "We the People".

Corporations need to be stripped of their "personhood".

[Yours Truly]

Col. sir,

Happy 236th. Independence Day to you & all Citizens of these United States!

It is a queer feeling on my part that I've never felt belonging anywhere....(a Jew in a former existence??)

Hence it's always so nice to see the patriotic feelings of other folk.

Notwithstanding the often (mis)understood comment by Chou-Enlai (not related) to Democracy, I say....

God Bless America!

[Yours Truly]

"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

James Madison to W. T. Barry

4th Aug. 1822

[Mike Martin, Yorktown, VA]

Re Citizens United and Romney's assertion that "corporations are people, too", a writer in another forum offered that he'd start believing that when the state of Texas executes its first corporation.

One thought that stays with me about the Declaration of Independence is the environment in which it was debated and written. To think of those gentlemen gathered in Philadelphia in the heat of an east coast summer with its unrelenting heat and humidity, staying true to their purpose, debating the best way "to bring forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal", and, finally, irrevocably turning their backs on the only government they'd known, to me, is just the epitome of the Age of Enlightenment.

[Bill H]

If the media did its job, and voters did their job, Citizens United wouldn't matter.