Independence Day

Last night my children and I started watching the HBO Special on John Adams. It was my second time to see it and I believe it is always good to refresh our minds on the price paid and the principles that led to the founding of our nation. 

The price is still being paid today as we continue to send our young men and women to fight for our freedom and liberty both home and abroad.

Today most of politician’s and most of American’s refer to America as a democracy; yet it was the one issue that our Founding Fathers were adamant about is that the United States was a Republic and NOT a Democracy.

There is NOWHERE  in our Constitution or Bill of Rights that uses the word Democracy. Oh, you learned it in your school books, we all did. Today when we hear politicians and TV anchorman speak they NEVER use the word Republic only a Democracy. 

I have always wanted to ask people in power and those in authority to explain the difference and watch many of them stutter. 

Why is it important to know the difference?

The following quote attributed to Professor Alexander Fraser Tyler who was writing back when America was still a colony:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of Government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with a result that a democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a Dictatorship. 

Article 4 Section 4 of our Constitution guarantees to every state in the Union a Republican form of government.

Thirty-eight years after the Declaration of Independence was written, John Adams warned,

 “A democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy that didn’t commit suicide.”

Can you name one that democracy that has lasted?

Are we headed that way?

The progression of a democracy, where do you think America is?

From Bondage to Spiritual Faith

From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage

From Great Courage to Liberty

From Liberty to Abundance

From Abundance to Complacency

                                          From Complacency to Apathy

                                                  From Apathy to Dependency

                                                          From Dependency back to Bondage 

The Declaration of Independence contains the principles of a Republican form of government. All men are created equal with certain unalienable rights that governments are formed by men to secure these rights and that governments derive their power from the consent of the governed.

The essence a Republic is the rule of law. This law is common law and scientific law. It does not change.

Our founders knew history, and they understood this cycle. They knew the natural course for governments was to grow bigger and more powerful. They also knew the more powerful the government, the weaker its people. They wrote a constitution that prevented the unbridled growth of the national government.

As James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper #45, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined and will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce.

The Pledge of Allegiance starts out, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag, and to the Republic for which it stands,  one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

In the strictest sense of the word, the system of government established by the Constitution was never intended to be a “democracy.”

This is evident not only in the wording of the Pledge of Allegiance but in the Constitution itself which declares that “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” (Article IV, Section 4).

Watching John Adams last night allowed me to see once again how many times the colonist tried to address the issue’s that King George was imposing on them by limiting their freedom. (I had to wonder what would have happened IF he had been more understanding of the colonists desire to be heard and responded with inclusion.)

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.

Unalienable Rights

Unalienable rights are given by God, it is a uniquely American philosophy. It teaches that Man, the individual is endowed at birth with rights that are unalienable because they are given by God.

The Right to Life

The Right for Liberty

The Right to the pursuit of happiness

To list ALL the rights of the individual that flow from those three would add up to all of man’s freedom. Suffice it to say, we have seen many of those assumed rights like parental rights taken away daily.

To see children being taken from loving families because the government doesn’t like your views on raising your kids, educating them the way you see fit, choosing to vaccinate or not, disagreeing and asking for a second medical opinion and having your kids medically kidnapped IS a violation of our UNALIENABLE rights.

We must get back to what Thomas Jefferson said, as he admonished Supreme Court Justice William Johnson:

“On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the papers of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, editor (Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1830), Vol IV, p. 373, to Judge William Johnson on June 12 1823.

Think how much better that would be.

The Declaration and The Colonists grievances

I have copied our Declaration and the grievances the colonist did their best to address with King George for your review.

The Declaration of Independence

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 harrass 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 benefits 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 Brittish 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.

Two things, teach your kids…they aren’t learning this is public schools.

Second, how do you feel our freedoms and liberties are being violated today, leave in the comments.

His Story and His Truth is marching on.