How Are Your Unalienable Rights These Days?

As the year draws to an end and we witness global market collapses, mass foreclosures, historical elections, billion dollar bailouts, superpower posturing, unemployment lines lengthen, energy prices going up when the cost of a barrel is down, and roadside bombs still going off, I have to do something to maintain my sanity. On occasion, I read the dictionary, but this week, it seemed more apt to pick up the Declaration of Independence, and re-read it. Or READ it for the very first time from the point of view that probably isn't too dissimilar to the men (and woman) who wrote it. When my kids tell me that history is boring and unnecessary, they get a very long dissertation that amounts to: If you do not know from whence you came, you will not know where you need to go… Even today, these are pretty radical ideas. But they're the ideas that our country is built upon, and it's up to us not to forget it. That means that when a bunch of people start acting like King George, even if they are rich and powerful, we need to recognize that they are dangerous. We need to recognize that this country is the most glorious experiment in diversity in the history of the world. If we read the very first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, it is a vow of rebellion from tyranny.

I do not think that things are going to get better in our country very soon. I am a cynic with these bailouts. I have observed for at least a year and a half that we have been in a serious economic down-swing even before much was being said in the papers. I think that we, the people of the United States of America, need to go back to our basics and remember what this country is based on. Not greed and gluttony, but freedom and respect. Happy reading, and don't stop here—the rest is at the link at the bottom, and it you will be able to see how history does repeat itself…

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. Read the rest here