DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this blog post is to inform not to convince. Take what is said here and apply reason, logic and research of your own… or don’t.Take what you need and leave the rest.
It has been said that these United States of America have as their foundation pillars, two documents, The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.The precepts and principles illustrated therein form the basis and justification for the republic that was formed by the breakaway British colonies in 1776…or so we are told.
Although it has never been used as an example of United States law, the Declaration of Independence is cited as the bedrock foundation of all United States jurisprudence that has followed. The operational clause of that Declaration is as follows:”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…”
Two points stand out. Item first; The Founders’ position was that all men were endued with certain rights “by their Creator”, (common usage understood by the Founders was a description of God), that were unalienable, that is to say that those rights were: “unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor.” The Declaration states that among these many rights are; “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. (Thomas Jefferson, on of the chief architects of the Declaration originally had “Property” in the place of Happiness).
The second major point was that governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed, which is to say that in order to exercise power legitimately, those governed must so consent.
It therefore strains reason that in a republic that maintains it is composed of free and sovereign people who have been granted equal and that are unable to be taken or given away that “we the people” are ruled by the whim of tyrants and are constrained through force and the threat of force in a manner no different that that exercised by the dictators at the heads of nation-states we identify as evil and destructive to both “civilized” people and their own subjects.
A weakness of humans is that we often obey force from fear of retribution, physical pain or death, yet we as an assumedly “free” people make concessions to those we absurdly characterize as our “public servants” when, in truth, it is “we the people” who do the bidding of the “elected” officials and their unelected and appointed bureaucrats.
Why would a “free people” do this? There are more of us than there are of them. Is it cowardice? Have we become so accustomed to kowtowing to power while pulling our own forelock to please our political masters that we no longer understand the requirements of freedom let along have the intestinal fortitude to stand up for ourselves? Have we become so blinded by the propaganda that we prefer comfortable voluntary servitude to dangerous and uncertain freedom?
I will examine these and other questions in the following series of posts. Among other things, I will be questioning the truth of the lyric of a Lee Greenwood song that says; “I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free. And I won’t forget the men who died to give that right to me…”
To quote Founding Father John Adams; “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. “