From: Twistedhed )
The 4th of July !
Date: 2001-07-04 20:45:45
Newsgroups: rec.radio.cb

Today we celebrate our right to overthrow the government.

There is no pussyfooting around this fact. It is the central meaning of
Independence Day.

Today's firecrackers are reminders of the bloody war we were willing to
fight against the British to win freedom. Bang.

We can try to rename today's holiday the more innocuous "Fourth of
July." We can outlaw firecrackers on the grounds of nuisance and fire
hazard and you'll-put-somebody's-eye-out.
But so far nobody has been able to rewrite the Declaration of
Independence itself, and the words of that document are crystal clear.
Today is a spiritual, passionate, angry, violent holiday for a modern
society that is squeamish about every one of those adjectives.

If you get a chance today, you should read the actual words of the
Declaration. Read the whole thing. It's even better out loud. Imagine
you are really fed up while you're reading it. When you get to the list
of abuses by King George III, you will get angrier and angrier. I still
do.

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.
Endowed by their Creator! Were the Framers deftly sidestepping the word
"God," or in their day did they simply assume that one word was
synonymous with the other? Either way is fine -- the point is that we
have inherent rights that can never be taken away.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
There's the Big Idea. Government gets its authority from the consent of
the people. It is one of the most important political things anybody
ever said, except maybe for the next sentence ...

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...

And that is the gist of it. The people give the government its power. If
the government becomes tyrannical, the people have the right to cast it
off.
This does not mean that the Framers intended us to start a revolution
every time we got ticked off. It does not bestow any moral authority on
kooks and extremists. In fact, Jefferson and his editors stressed just
the opposite: government should not be changed for "light and transient
causes."

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.

Legally speaking, do you know how much weight the Declaration of
Independence carries today? None. Zippo. The Constitution is the sole
basis of our government. Yet the Constitution would not have been
possible without the Declaration -- it is the "new Guard."

An opinion survey this week said 66 percent of us do not believe
Americans would be as willing to call for a revolution today as they
were 225 years ago.

But are we really so puny? We have glorified the Revolution over the
past two and a quarter centuries. The truth is it was a controversial
and divisive time. A lot of colonists wanted the King to win. They were
willing to live under tyranny for a little extra security.

Do you think they magically grew a better crop of human beings in the
1700s? Or did Americans of that era rise to the occasion, just as they
did in a Civil War, in a terrible Depression, in two 20th-century wars
against global evil?

In our modern life we are fat and happy and safe and selfish. The
question for today is whether in that comfort and selfishness, an
essential American idea has been extinguished, or is just sleeping.

An outstanding piece written by Tampa Bay's own Howard Troxler in
today's local. Sparky knows the paper.
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