Some thoughts I’ve been having about a document lately of interest…
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.
What the Declaration is, is a petition for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable differences. It converted the armed insurrection in the colonies into a War for Independence — a war to secede from the British Empire.
Today it is commonplace to be told there are no rights to revolution, nor to secede — that any question about a right to secede was settled by Union victory in the Civil War. Yet the existence of the United States is a prima facie rebuke to that argument. The Union could not by force of arms annihilate that very resort that created it. A man might as well claim that by killing his pregnant sister he proved he did not gestate in, and emerge from, his mother’s womb.
There are reasons why it was good that the Continentals won their war for independence, and there are reasons why it is good that the Confederacy did not win theirs — but the claim of a right to secede from a parent government cannot stand unqualified as a reason in favor of one and against the other. If the Confederacy was wrong about this in the 1860s, the Continentals must also have been wrong about it 90 years earlier. And the Continentals were not wrong.
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.
In this day and age one of the concepts we most urgently need to stress is the unalienability of true rights; they are neither granted nor subject to removal by the State at whim.
It’s also important to note that the rights explicitly named are “among” the unalienable rights with which we are endowed. This makes it clear that the listing is incomplete. As broad as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” may seem, the members of the Continental Congress that adopted this declaration were quite comfortable with the idea that the rights to which we are entitled, by sole virtue of our humanity, extend even further.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
Governments are instituted not to grant rights, but merely to secure those which we already have.
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.
More right to revolution — and here is explicitly described the overthrow of a delegitimized government, rather than merely the removal of a portion of its people from its reach. Here the Declaration lays out a basis whereby the people of Great Britain, had they deemed it necessary, could have overthrown the House of Hanover — if not the monarchy itself. The armed overthrow of a sitting monarch is a common theme in British history, while the outright overthrow of the monarchy had only happened once, but more recently to those alive in 1776 than 1776 is to us in 2015.
What follows in the Declaration is the listing of grounds for the divorce being sought. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons over the last 20 years or so between that listing and the sorts of things our own federal government has done; anyone who would like to reprise such a comparison can certainly do so — personally, I think we’re past the point of needing to.
The government schools have failed to teach the founding documents effectively. If you are a Christian who feels called to witness for Christ, you can understand when I say we all need to witness for our constitutional republic. If you are not one of those Christians, this is your chance to understand their calling.
Здесь можно оставить свои комментарии. Выпуск подготовленплагином wordpress для subscribe.ru
No comments:
Post a Comment