On July 4th, 1776, a band of American Patriots placed their lives, fortunes and sacred honor on the line to take on the most powerful empire of that time: the British Empire. The Founders wrote a Declaration of Independence that stated their reasons for their secession against the British Empire. Anthony Gregory outlines and summarizes the grievances of the American colonists: "The Americans rebelled for freedom from their motherland because they had believed that their liberties had been seriously undermined by the British government. The government had levied taxes on them without their consent -- on some items, as high as a couple percent. The government had searched and seized their property on the basis of unreasonably broad warrants called 'Writs of Assistance.' The government was elevating the military above the civil law. The government was forcing the American people to finance its global empire. The government was sending forth bureaucrats to regulate and tax the American people. Do you see a trend here?"
The Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, understood that our rights are not special privileges granted to us by government, but rather that our rights are natural and God-given; that by virtue of being a human being created by God, he has endowed us with certain natural rights that no government can take away. The Declaration of Independence boldly states: "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." And then in the next sentence, the Founding Fathers basically stated what the proper role of government in a free-society is supposed to be: "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."
Jacob Hornberger further states the importance of the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence: "Every person, Jefferson said, has been endowed with certain fundamental, inherent rights. These rights don't come from government and, therefore, people don't need to be beholden to government for them. People's rights are endowed in them by nature and God. What is the role of government? Jefferson observed that people call government into existence for the sole purpose of protecting the exercise of these natural, God-given rights. And when government becomes destructive of this end -- when it infringes upon or destroys people's rights, the people have the right to ditch the government -- alter or even abolish it and replace it with a government that is limited to its rightful role of servant whose job is to protect the exercise of people's rights. The Declaration was the most radical political statement in history. It not only rattled government officials of that time, it continues to do so even today, especially those government officials who are unable to accept the notion that they are mere servants and that the citizenry are their masters."
But as it stands today, it seems that the American Republic, along with the U.S. Constitution that our Founding Fathers created are both dead. The U.S. government has in essence replaced the British Empire. While the American colonists did not have the parasitic welfare-ponzi scheme programs back then, they did protest a British government that regulated and taxed them to support a militaristic empire, war finance, imperial security and the anti-capitalist economic system of mercantilism. The British government had violated the property rights of the American colonists by allowing British troops to write their own search warrants, which were called "Writs of Assistance".
The U.S. government currently runs an American Empire comprised of 700-1000 military bases, an astronomically large military budget that makes our military weaker, a military-industrial-complex, perpetual war and going abroad in search of monsters to destroy. The U.S. government persecutes our economic freedom by foisting a welfare-regulatory-complex that regulates almost every aspect of our economic lives, steals our wealth from our pockets and gives it to those who have not earned it. The taxes that Americans have to put up with today are comparatively higher than the taxes that the American colonists protested. The Founding Fathers would be completely repulsed by the existence of an income tax, which they would view as legalized theft. The U.S. government assaults our constitutionally-protected civil liberties with the 4th Amendment killing Patriot Act, which authorizes warrant less searches and seizure (called national security letters), military commissions that avoid the Constitution during unconstitutional wars, torture, and indefinite detention. The U.S. government devalues our money by forcing Americans to accept rapidly depreciating pieces of paper that we equate to wealth. The U.S. government also assaults our Constitution by charging head-first into unconstitutional wars, building a large and parasitic welfare-regulatory-taxation-complex, violating states' rights and the 10th Amendment, expanding the powers of the Presidency beyond its' constitutional box, and expanding its ability to write any wrong, tax any event, regulate any behavior, and fight any war it wants.
If the Founding Fathers saw the state of America, they would be shocked that we the people have thrown away the American Republic and replaced it with a socialist, imperialist, interventionist, and statist monster known as Leviathan. As Jacob Hornber notes, "Americans have rendered under Caesar the things that belong to God, especially in the area of voluntary charity and the moral duty that people have to honor their parents and to care for others. "
Can we as Americans reclaim the ideas of the War for American Independence and turn the tide of statism in America? While the battle may seem impossible to win, it can be done. We must be ever vigilant in defending our natural rights and liberties from an oppressive government, and we must have faith that God will change the hearts of those in government to respect and protect our rights and liberties under a uniform rule of law and follow the U.S. Constitution as the Founding Fathers (aside from Hamilton and his nationalistic Federalist party) understood it.
The mess we are in can be cleaned up. But only if our government terminates all the wars we are engaged in around the world, bring our troops home, repeal the welfare-regulatory-taxation-complex, abolish violations of civil liberties (which can be found in laws such as the Patriot Act), and respect and protect our personal and economic freedoms, which are basically our natural rights given to us by God. Only then can America reclaim what made this country the greatest country on earth: liberty.
Happy Fourth of July everyone.
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