The U.S. Declaration of Independence
According to the Writer’s Almanac, today is the anniversary of the official signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. They write:
“It was introduced as a resolution by Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia on June 7, 1776 — a resolution that said, ‘That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.’”
Obviously, this turned out fairly well – at least until recently. I think very few Americans – and even fewer folks outside the US – approve of the direction this country is taking in the important matters of our day: environmentalism, human rights, world security, and the development of important new technologies.
Is it too late to turn this back around? If I thought so, I wouldn’t be spending my time pointing this stuff out.
I concluded my recent article on a related line of thought as follows:
Ladies and gentlemen, America as we once knew her is slowly and quietly being brutally murdered from within. Installed in our statehouses, pocketed jackal marionettes in tailored suits have for too long mocked and defiled the honorable title of “public servant” – and their shrouded and remorseless puppeteers of wealth are the true assassins of our nation.
Already our liberty and our birthrights have been gnawed and unraveled to such a depth that they now twist tenuously at the very edge of our reach. I think it well past time we begin to seriously consider what actions we can and must take to save each other. The hour is late, and yet I’ve not quite lost hope.
As Frederick Douglass noted in 1857, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
The actor Peter Finch, in the character of a frustrated Howard Beale in the film Network, advises his television audience to get up out of their chairs, to go open a window, and to stick their heads out and yell as loud as they can, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” It was not quite an empty gesture, because it demonstrated to everyone in the city – whether in or out of their chairs – just how many people had reached the limits of tolerance.
However, I think we ought to be more organized, more creative and more persistent than that, and I think these are among the central keys:
Truth; Non-Violence; Cooperation; Direct Action; Perseverance.
These five alone may be insufficient, but I fully consider them to be indispensable.
Certainly the act of doing nothing will both simplify and expedite the extinction of our cherished liberty beneath the fetid talons of tyrannical greed – and that heartrending subjugation will, for generations, perhaps forever, snuff out the fond hope of a people’s government that our precious nation once opened to humankind.