Amen & Right On, Brother!

I didn't write this. A guy by the name of Tom Lidbury did. But the sentiment is all mine. I signed it. Will you?

IN AMERICA, JULY 4, 2010

The unanimous Declaration of we the freedom loving people in the land called the United States of America

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to reject the government that prevails in their land, and to reassert among the powers of the earth their natural and unalienable liberties, a decent respect for peace requires that they should first declare the causes that impel them to reject the status quo.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all human beings are created equals; that they posses unalienable rights that are inextricably intertwined with their humanity; that among these are freedom from infringements on their life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness; that governments derive their just powers only to the extent of the consent of the governed; that whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the oppressed to resist and, if able, 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 the security of the unalienable liberties.

Prudence will dictate that governments will not be rejected for light and transient causes, as rational beings are disposed to acquiesce to evils lesser than those incident to resistance. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations tends invariably toward intolerable despotism, rational beings will come to a point where even death be preferred to the status quo and they will risk all to overthrow tyrannical government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these citizens in the lands once freed by the founding fathers of the United States of America; and such is now the necessity which constrains us to rise up and reject the transmogrified government that is the status quo today and to restore freedom in this land. The history of the present system of government in the United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny, however benevolent the tyrants claim to be. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

1. The government has plundered our economy and set itself up as a leviathan that consumes an obscene portion of our productivity and has destroyed the spirit of our people.

2. The government has taxed so onerously at the federal level and so dominated and meddled in the affairs properly reserved to our state and local governments as to leave vanishingly little sovereignty in them, and has declared itself invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever, contrary to our Constitution.

3. The government has subverted representative government by taxing citizens unequally in myriad, convoluted ways and otherwise using gimmicks and tricks to impose hidden taxes, thereby creating large segments of people who are substantially immune to the direct and obvious consequences of taxation and others who actually receive more than they pay, and has thus obliterated the only real check against massive taxation and government growth, a system desirable to tyrants only.

4. The government has spent profligately and borrowed obscene sums of money, so much so as to have essentially hocked our future for generations to come.

5. The government has erected a multitude of administrative offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

6. The government has created a plethora of useless government employees and showered them with obscene salaries and benefits that scant few of those of us who must pay for these extravagances will ever enjoy ourselves.

7. The government has taken ownership or control over businesses, or subsidized politically connected industries and businesses, contrary to basic limits on appropriate government, including automobile manufacturers, the home loan industry, the agricultural industry, the “green” industry, and many others.

8. The government has refused to abide by the rule of law, including for example subverting bankruptcy laws and property rights retroactively to the benefit of favored constituencies such as labor unions like the United Auto Workers.

9. The government has purported to establish affirmative entitlements owed by some people to others, contrary to our Constitution and our unalienable rights to liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.

10. The government has forbidden the sovereign states from passing laws as they see fit, including for example by confiscating their citizens’ property and then offering some of it back to the states only upon conditions, ranging from seemingly trivial matters such as speed limits to very serious matters such as Medicare.

11. The government has set up laws and regulatory schemes that are so pervasive and intrusive as to require people to regularly lay open all of their most private affairs to bureaucrats, making a mockery of the right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable search, including for example imposing a federal income tax and other taxes that can be assessed only by such invasive intrusions on privacy.

12. The government has taxed the people to fund arts, media and community organizers, each of which is an unnecessary and inappropriate object of government and is prone to being abused for purposes of government propaganda and mischief, including for example National Pubic Radio, the National Endowment of the Arts, and ACORN.

13. The government has aided and abetted the states in erecting a socialized school system by taxing the people and reserving the funds exclusively to the government schools, thereby leaving most of us little or no viable economic alternative to enrolling our children in the government schools, which not only violates our immediate freedom of choice but also: (a) insidiously undermines the foundations of liberty by allowing the government to indoctrinate our children and corrupt their spirits; and (b) creates otherwise unnecessary conflicts over the government’s role in matters of religion, discipline, dress codes, politics, and many other controversial issues, none of which would have involved the government at all but for the establishment of socialized schools.

14. The government has enabled organized labor groups to undermine our liberty and economy by, for example, forcing employees to join a union against their will at the whim of their coworkers, forcing employers to employ people who join unions, precluding employers from terminating the employment of union members who refuse to work, forcing employers to bargain with unions against their will, and in countless other ways turning upside down the proper relationship between employer and employee.

15. The government has encouraged illegal immigration by providing and inducing the states to provide entitlements and benefits to illegal aliens at the expense of citizens.

16. The government has forced people to pay into government programs for retirement and health against their will, and, adding injury to insult, pillaged the funds paid into these programs and conducted them as a Ponzi scheme that will come crashing down on most of us and our children.

17. The government has acted as the world’s insurer without collecting a premium or requiring repayment, even though we are already deeply in debt and cannot afford even the domestic spending and entitlements that have been erected.

18. The government has proposed to combine with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving its assent to their acts of pretended legislation including, for example, conspiring to redistribute our wealth to foreign nations on the pretense of an imaginary and/or wildly exaggerated climate crisis.

19. The government has impaired our right to trade freely with all peaceful parts of the world including by imposing tariffs and other trade restrictions with respect to such places.

20. The government has placed unnecessary, dangerous and frequently misused power in the Federal Reserve, which has caused and worsened economic calamities since its inception; rather than provide for a stable currency.

21. The government has impaired the freedom of people to enter into contracts on terms agreeable to them including imposing minimum wage laws (which, apart from the wrongful government interference in private affairs, serve only to reduce employment of those most in need of jobs and employers’ ability to compete in the global markets), setting the terms on which people can purchase various goods and services such as credit cards, and myriad other interferences in private affairs of free people.

22. The government has taken away our Constitution, abolishing its most valuable restraints on the growth of the federal government, and altering fundamentally the forms of our government.

23. The government has established two dominant political parties that have, through various laws, set themselves up as perpetual rulers that can scarcely be challenged by independents.

24. The government has prevented the exploration and use of our natural energy resources.

25. The government has enacted paternalistic and oppressive laws that infringe on our freedoms without regard to any conduct that proximately causes real injury to others, which is the only legitimate justification for incursions against individual liberty, ranging from annoying little meddling like seat belt laws to egregious power grabs like so-called “health care reform” that essentially nationalizes an entire sector of our economy and private lives.

In every stage of these oppressions, and still others, we have elected politicians who have promised integrity and faithful service. Our repeated elections have resulted only in repeated injury. A form of government whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit for the government of a free people.

We, the oppressed American people, therefore reassert our unalienable rights as free people and declare that though we who are aggrieved may be forced to acquiesce in this tyranny, we do not consent. Take notice, you in the political class and whatever number stands with you, whether a majority or a minority, that you rule over us through force alone, and not by the consent of the governed, and therefore, your rule is illegitimate. We now stand in resistance, peacefully. We are now at work to reform or replace the present system of government, the likes of which our founding fathers raised an army to defeat. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm resolve, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.