July 4th

[Crafty_Dog]

I suppose I could have posted this Peggy Noonan piece on the immigration thread, but somehow it seems more fitting to open a thread dedicated to July 4th.
=======================

On Letting Go
How we become American.

Friday, June 29, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Happy Fourth of July. To mark this Wednesday's holiday, I share a small moment that happened a year ago in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I was at a wake for an old family friend named Anthony Coppola, a retired security guard who'd been my uncle Johnny's best friend from childhood. All the old neighborhood people were there from Clinton Avenue and from other streets in Brooklyn, and Anthony's sisters Tessie and Angie and Gloria invited a priest in to say some prayers. About a hundred of us sat in chairs in a little side chapel in the funeral home.

The priest, a jolly young man with a full face and thick black hair, said he was new in the parish, from South America. He made a humorous, offhand reference to the fact that he was talking to longtime Americans who'd been here for ages. This made the friends and family of Anthony Coppola look at each other and smile. We were Italian, Irish, everything else. Our parents had been the first Americans born here, or our grandparents had. We had all grown up with two things, a burly conviction that we were American and an inner knowledge that we were also something else. I think we experienced this as a plus, a double gift, though I don't remember anyone saying that. When Anthony's mother or her friend, my grandmother, talked about Italy or Ireland, they called it "the old country." Which suggested there was a new one, and that we were new in it.

But this young priest, this new immigrant, he looked at us and thought we were from the Mayflower. As far as he was concerned--as far as he could tell--we were old Yankee stock. We were the establishment. As the pitcher in "Bang the Drum Slowly" says, "This handed me a laugh."

This is the way it goes in America. You start as the Outsider and wind up the Insider, or at least being viewed as such by the newest Outsiders. We are a nation of still-startling social fluidity. Anyone can become "American," but they have to want to first.

It has had me thinking a lot about how people become American.





I don't know that when my grandfather Patrick Byrne and his sisters, Etta and Mary Jane, who had lived on a hardscrabble little farm in Donegal, on the west coast of Ireland, felt about America when they got here. I don't know if they were "loyal to America." I think they were loyal to their decision to come to America. In for a penny, in for a pound. They had made their decision. Now they had to prove to themselves it was the right one. I remember asking Etta what she'd heard about America before she got here. She said, "The streets were paved with gold." All the immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th century used that phrase.
When I was in college in the 1970s, I got a semester abroad my junior year, and I took a boat from England to Ireland and made my way back to Donegal. This was approximately 55 years after my grandfather and his sisters had left. There I met an old man who'd been my grandfather's boyhood friend. He lived by himself in a shack on a hill and was grateful the cousins I'd found had sent me to him. He told me he'd been there the day my grandfather, then a young man, left. He said the lorry came down the lane and stopped for my grandfather, and that his father said goodbye. He said, "Go now, and never come back to hungry Ireland again."

My grandfather had his struggles here but never again went home. He'd cast his lot. That's an important point in the immigrant experience, when you cast your lot, when you make your decision. It makes you let go of something. And it makes you hold on to something. The thing you hold on to is the new country. In succeeding generations of your family the holding on becomes a habit and then a patriotism, a love. You realize America is more than the place where the streets were paved with gold. It has history, meaning, tradition. Suddenly that's what you treasure.

A problem with newer immigrants now is that for some it's no longer necessary to make The Decision. They don't always have to cast their lot. There are so many ways not to let go of the old country now, from choosing to believe that America is only about money, to technology that encourages you to stay in constant touch with the land you left, to TV stations that broadcast in the old language. If you're an immigrant now, you don't have to let go. Which means you don't have to fully join, to enmesh. Your psychic investment in America doesn't have to be full. It can be provisional, temporary. Or underdeveloped, or not developed at all.

And this may have implications down the road, and I suspect people whose families have been here a long time are concerned about it. It's one of the reasons so many Americans want a pause, a stopping of the flow, a time for the new ones to settle down and settle in. It's why they oppose the mischief of the Masters of the Universe, as they're being called, in Washington, who make believe they cannot close our borders while they claim they can competently micromanage all other aspects of immigration.





It happens that I know how my grandfather's sister Mary Jane became an American. She left a paper trail. She kept a common-place book, a sort of diary with clippings and mementos. She kept it throughout the 1920s, when she was still new here. I found it after she'd died. It's a big brown book with cardboard covers and delicate pages. In the front, in the first half, there are newspaper clippings about events in Ireland, and sentimental poems. "I am going back to Glenties . . ."
But about halfway through, the content changes. There is a newspaper clipping about something called "Thanksgiving." There are newspaper photos of parades down Fifth Avenue. And suddenly, near the end, there are patriotic poems. One had this refrain: "So it's home again and home again, America for me./ My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be./ In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars/ Where the air is full of sunlight, and the flag is full of stars."

Years later, when I worked for Ronald Reagan, those words found their way into one of his speeches, a nod from me to someone who'd made her decision, cast her lot, and changed my life.

I think I remember the last time I told that story. I think it was to a young Mexican-American woman who was a speechwriter for Bill Clinton. I think she completely understood.

God bless our beloved country on the 231st anniversary of its birth.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father" (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays on OpinionJournal.com.

[Crafty_Dog]

Escape From New York
Even Gen. Washington didn't win every battle.

BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, July 3, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

In 1776 Lt. Col. Thomas Knowlton seemed to be precisely the kind of military officer the American military needed to win the Revolution. He was a veteran of the French and Indian War two decades earlier. He proved to be a supreme leader of men in combat outside Boston. And he was tapped by Gen. George Washington to start a new elite military unit--Knowlton's Rangers--that was capable of operating behind enemy lines.

On Sept. 16, 1776, in a skirmish in northern Manhattan now known as the Battle of Harlem Heights, Knowlton was preparing a surprise attack against crack British troops when his unit's position was given away. Knowlton knew what was at stake. That summer the British had landed some 34,000 troops in Staten Island--an invasion about the size of the U.S. surge in Iraq over the last few months--and ferried them into what is now Brooklyn. Using diversionary tactics and a night march, the British outflanked Washington's army in late August, trapping it against the East River. The American Army and the Revolution might have been crushed on the spot.

Realizing his peril, Washington slipped his troops out of Brooklyn and across the East River into Manhattan in the dead of night and then retreated up the island into Harlem. In mid-September, with the British bearing down on him, Washington was desperate to escape from New York. Knowlton's forces had stumbled across advance British units, briefly retreated and then re-engaged as part of a larger military maneuver. When he lost the element of surprise, Knowlton might have opted to pull back. But he led an attack instead and was killed. Today he is remembered in an award handed out by the Military Intelligence Corps Association to those who distinguish themselves in the service of army intelligence.





It is often remarked that in deciding to rebel against the most powerful European empire in the world, the Founding Fathers risked losing everything. What is too often forgotten is that many of those who joined the rebellion did lose everything. About 40 miles north of where Col. Knowlton fell rest the remains of another often-forgotten skirmish of the Revolution. Inside what is now Bear Mountain State Park, not far from West Point, fortifications were built to stop the British from gaining control of the Hudson River and with it the ability to split New England and eastern New York from the rest of the country, which might have allowed the British to pacify less rebellious Southern states.
American soldiers had stretched a large chain across the Hudson, built fortifications and waited. A year after Washington was driven from New York City, the British launched an ambitious campaign. Gen. John Burgoyne was dispatched to move south from Canada and link up with other British forces, some of whom would sail up the Hudson. In October 1777, the king's army arrived in the Hudson Valley, assaulted the fortifications and, with a final bayonet charge, defeated the Americans. They then broke the chain.

Those who defended the redoubt that still stands today held off waves of British soldiers before finally being defeated. And their gallantry wasn't in vain. By forcing the British to take the valley by force, the Americans set in motion a series of events that would help win the war. Burgoyne didn't receive the support he needed and ended up, after dragging his forces through miles of wilderness to the outskirts of Albany, defeated at Saratoga, N.Y. He surrendered his army of some 6,000 men, a stunning defeat for the British that convinced the French to enter the war.

Today it seems that every soldier killed in action and every minor skirmish involving American troops is front-page news. But 231 years after the Declaration of Independence was ratified by the Continental Congress, we seem to have lost sight of the everyday heroics and sacrifices that made this republic possible. The Revolutionary War took eight years to win, with many defeats and setbacks along the way. We owe those who stuck with it and made those sacrifices more than we know.

Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.

[Crafty_Dog]

Second post of the morning:

WSJ:

'Wonderfully Spared'
By JOYCE LEE MALCOLM
July 3, 2007; Page A17

'You and I have been wonderfully spared," Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams in 1812. "Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomak, and, on this side, myself alone." Jefferson and Adams were not merely signers of the Declaration. Both sat on the committee that drafted the document, and Jefferson wrote it. And while they later became bitter political opponents, they reconciled in their last years.

Adams, the Yankee lawyer, revolutionary, Founding Father and ex-president, was 77 in 1812; Jefferson, the Southern aristocrat, revolutionary, Founder and ex-president, was 69. Both were mentally acute but frail. Jefferson spent three to four hours a day on horseback and could scarcely walk, Adams walked three to four miles a day and could scarcely ride.

 
John Trumbull's "Declaration of Independence"
They would never see each other again. But from a modest farm in Quincy, Mass., and a plantation in Virginia they corresponded and reminisced about the days when they were "fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right of self-government."

It's easy now, in a nation awash with complaints about what our Founders did not do, what imperfect humans they seem to 21st century eyes, to overlook how startlingly bold their views and actions were in their own day and are, in fact, even today. Who else in 1776 declared, let alone thought it a self-evident truth, that all men were created equal, entitled to inalienable rights, or to any rights at all? How few declare these views today or, glibly declaring them, really intend to treat their countrymen or others as equal, entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Certainly not America's 20th century enemies, the Nazis and communists; certainly not today's Islamic radicals, who consider infidels unworthy to live and the faithful bound by an ancient and brutal code of law. We are fortunate that the Founders of our nation were enlightened, generous, jealous of their rights and those of their countrymen, and prepared to risk everything to create a free republic.

Breaking with Britain was a risky and distressing venture; could the American colonies go it alone and survive in a world of great European powers? If not, what better empire than the British? It took a year of fighting before the Continental Congress and the states were prepared to declare independence. "We might have been a free and a great people together," Jefferson sighed.

But if we were angry at British treatment, we were also lucky that Britain was our mother country. The British taught us respect for the rights of individuals, for limited government, for the rule of law and how such values could be realized. "An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery," Edmund Burke insisted, pleading our cause before Parliament in March, 1775.

Scores of distinguished British officers refused commissions to fight against us. Some, who were willing, were reluctant to press their advantage over our literally rag-tag army. The British parliament wrangled day after day over the fitful progress of the war. And when it was over and, thanks to French assistance, we had won, Britain was careful in negotiating the peace treaty for fear we would fall under the influence and control of the French or the Spanish. We would fight against Britain again, but over the centuries the common heritage that connects our two peoples has brought us together as close allies.

We were lucky in our generals. Unlike the commanders of nearly all revolutionary armies before and since, George Washington resisted the temptation to seize power. After England's civil war between King Charles I and parliament, Oliver Cromwell, Parliament's leading general, evicted what remained of parliament and made himself "Lord Protector." The great expectations of the French Revolution ended when Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup against the republican government and later crowned himself emperor.

Not only do victorious generals have a nasty habit of taking over, but once an army becomes entangled in politics it is extraordinarily difficult to remove it from public affairs. Numerous modern countries have tried to control their armies and failed.

Washington prevented a coup by his officers; and when the war was over, he bid a moving farewell to his men and staff before appearing before Congress to resign his commission: "Having now finished the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theatre of Action . . . and take my leave of all the employments of public life." Then he hurried off to spend Christmas with Martha and their family. Although it sounds sentimental, trite even, it happened that way.

In their correspondence, Adams wrote Jefferson that the future would "depend on the Union" and asked how that Union was to be preserved. "The Union is still to me an Object of as much Anxiety as ever Independence was," he confided.

He was right to worry. The union has always been difficult, from the first fears that the 13 separate states would behave as competing countries or bickering groups, through a brutal and painful civil war whose wounds have yet to entirely heal, to a vast, modern land whose residents, taking for granted the blessings bestowed upon them, are deeply divided and quick to vilify each other.

More tragically, some seem to enjoy vilifying America, everything it has been and stands for, seeking and finding fatal shortcomings. Adams and Jefferson were not blind to those shortcomings. "We think ourselves possessed or at least we boast that we are so of Liberty of conscience on all subjects and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment, in all cases and yet," Adams admitted, "how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact." Recent moments of real unity after 9/11, when members of Congress stood together on the steps of the Capitol and sang "God Bless America," have been fleeting.

In 1825 Jefferson wrote to congratulate Adams on the election of his son John Quincy to the presidency -- an election so close it was decided in the House of Representatives. "So deeply are the principles of order, and of obedience to law impressed on the minds of our citizens generally that I am persuaded there will be as immediate an acquiescence in the will of the majority," Jefferson assured him, "as if Mr. Adams had been the choice of every man." He closed: "Nights of rest to you and days of tranquility are the wishes I tender you with my affect[iona]te respects."

On July 4 the following year, as the nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, its two frail signers died within hours of each other. Their cause, "struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right of self-government," continues in the nation they launched, still fraught with aspirations and anxieties, flaws and divisions but, one hopes, with the ability to reconcile as they did, to work together for the joint venture.

Ms. Malcolm teaches legal history at George Mason University School of Law and is the author of several books, including "Stepchild of the Revolution: A Slave Child in Revolutionary America," forthcoming from Yale University Press.

[Crafty_Dog]

Chills still run down my spine when I read this:
================================

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 shown, 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 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 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.

[rogt]

Maybe George W. Bush ought to read this himself.  Particularly these grievances the FFs had against the King of England (to which W bears more resemblance than any of the FFs):

-- He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

(Warrantless wiretaps of US citizens, pardoning Libby, refusing to comply with Congressional supoenas, etc.)

-- He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

(Firing any US attorneys who refused to fabricate charges against Democratic candidates right before elections and replacing them with Republican loyalists)

-- He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

(Appointing only right-wing, pro-corporate judges, in many cases to lifetime positions, as payback to campaign contributors)

-- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

(Designation of the extra-legal "enemy combatant" status, which they are trying to make stick for at least one US citizen)

-- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

(Rendering of terror suspects to secret prisons and other facilities where they can be tortured without interference)

-- 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.

(Use of "contractors" in Iraq to carry out certain actions that would be crimes for US military personnel)

[Crafty_Dog]

Rog:

Said with love, but may I suggest that in this thread it would be appropriate to "Give it a rest!"?

Thank you,
Marc

[G M]

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/07/06/san-fran-artists-celebrate-the-4th-exactly-the-way-youd-expect-them-to/

Rogt is just a product of his environment. See link above.

[Crafty_Dog]

And I grew up in a liberal Jewish family in Manhattan NYC in the 50s and 60s.  My mother co-chaired a committee in the local Democratic Party with later to be Congresswoman Bella Abzug and strategy sessions included people like Betty Friedan, Alan Lowenstein, Theodore Sorenson, and others-- and look at me now 

Any way, all this is part of the beauty and magic of America.

[G M]

I used to have a mohawk and wore punk rock t-shirts and waved around a tattered copy of the "Communist Manifesto" to offend my parents and other authority figures, of course I was 16, so that's my excuse.

[Crafty_Dog]

ttt

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/culture-war-has-new-target-independence-day

[G M]

https://ncrenegade.com/a-new-declaration-of-independence/

A New Declaration of Independence

When in the Course of human events which impelled our Founding Fathers to form a new Nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created free and equal and endowed by their Creator with the inalienable Rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, they determined to declare the reasons which inspired them to such a noble cause.

Because we hold to these same self-evident truths, we seek to adhere to these same timeless principles and to conduct our lives in a way which shows ourselves worthy of the precious legacy which has been handed down to us by such brave and honorable men.

WE are the worthy posterity of our noble Founding Fathers.

WE are the ones who have kept their Covenant and Constitution.

WE are the ones who recognize and revere the God of nature who has blessed us with the fruits of their labor.

All we have ever required of our fellow countrymen is to respect our Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness and, in turn, we have respected theirs.

Now our endowed Rights have been stolen by those especially entrusted for their protection.

Those who were created equal to us now think they have been elevated above us merely due to the office they have acquired solely through our good graces.

The Governments which have been instituted among us exclusively for the protection of our Rights, have become destructive of those very ends.

Our Safety and Happiness have been abused and usurped.

The principles upon which our Country was established are now distorted and derided, if they are remembered at all. As all of history shows, the pursuit of such a Government is designed to reduce us to absolute despotism.

Because we understand it is no light thing to alter, abolish or institute new Government, for far too long we have tried to content ourselves while evils were sufferable. But now there is no rule of law and our patience is viewed by our abusers only as consent to more abuse.

These are the Facts of the Tyranny we have endured at the hands of our elected Governors, Mayors, Judges, Sheriffs, Police, and various County and City Officials, as well as through their unholy alliance with unelected Unions, Social Justice Organizations, and Bureaucratic Agencies and Social Media:

We are no longer Equal Citizens before the Law or Society. We are divided along non-existent intersectional fault lines and granted special Rights and Privileges based on perceived grievances or denied them according to the same superficial criteria.
We have no Right to the Fruit of our Labor. Our property can be seized and our livelihoods destroyed on the whim of a mob or the arbitrary designation of an elected official.
Our history is rewritten, eradicated, distorted and despised.
Our elected officials issue mandates and decrees with no rational scientific, economic, or legal basis. Moreover, they themselves do not adhere to the same rules they create and enforce under threat of violence.
Our law enforcement punishes the law abiding while cowering before the criminal elements of society. Our judicial system protects the guilty while crushing the innocent with all the power at its disposal.
We are censored, marginalized, and ostracized in the public and private sphere for not championing evil as good and good as evil.
There are no checks and balances within our political, judicial or economic systems. An unholy alliance between these three segments of society forms a bulwark which allows for no questioning or redress.
Our religious Liberty is trampled upon, our churches are locked down as “non-essential” and our deeply held convictions are banned as “hate speech.”
Our families endure never-ending attacks and an uncertain future from the constant upheaval of random interference and overreach. Our children are denied their education, normal interaction with relatives and friends, and every hallmark of childhood itself.
Our last check on Tyranny, which are free and fair elections, is nothing but a charade. Outcomes are predetermined, fraud is rampant, and there is no recourse.
Because of their insatiable thirst for power, ignorance of history, arrogant and incorrect assumptions, intolerance for freedom, and contempt for their own heritage, these Tyrants and traitors within seek to conform us to their own will and unachievable Utopian vision. But because of their rejection of the God of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, they can only create a Hell on earth. This is a vision we reject and an agenda with which we cannot and will not comply. Because our abusers will never relent, they must be ended. We understand what this will entail, what will be required of us, and the personal cost we may well have to pay, but Freedom is so dear and our Legacy so worthy, that we are ready for this great undertaking.

Knowing that our God is Faithful, our Cause is Just and our Liberty more precious than Life itself, we take up our Founder’s mantle and engrave on our hearts the words of their Great Seal: Tyrannis Seditio, Obsequium Deo “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

Signed: WES RHINIER

[DougMacG]

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Hat tip Powerline

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDSZxUlGZnA&t=123s

[ccp]

we saw him in Orlando 20 something yrs ago

I forgot who he opened for

Tina Turner ?

[Crafty_Dog]

TTT

[G M]

https://apaththrough.substack.com/p/requiem-for-independence

[Crafty_Dog]

Very well written.

[DougMacG]

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

[Crafty_Dog]

That was really well said 

[DougMacG]

That was really well said 

Slow learner, I was nearly 60 when I learned Calvin Coolidge was one of our best Presidents ever.

[ccp]

"Slow learner, I was nearly 60 when I learned Calvin Coolidge was one of our best Presidents ever."

and Ulysses Grant too!  (for different reasons though)

[Crafty_Dog]

Agreed!