Declare Yourself Independent!

I had a very harrowing experience last night while writing a draft for today’s article.  The article was meant to be, just in time for Independence Day, a personal declaration of independence from the mindset of expansive government that has slowly but surely trampled the rights of American patriots since the Civil War and beyond.  The article was based on, and borrowed from, key phrases from a similar document written 233 years ago which touted the right of people to overthrow oppressive governments.  As I read the draft to my mother, I absent-mindedly forgot to mention which lines were mine, and which were penned by my hero Thomas Jefferson and his cronies. However, I noticed a distinct look of fear on her face as I read it. When I finished reading, she blinked, looked me in the eyes and said, “Oh, Sean, writing stuff like that is going to get you arrested.”

I was rendered speechless – no mere feat, as anyone who knows me personally will attest (and thus I have to give credit to Mom where it’s due…) – but upon coming to my senses, I explained to my mother that most of what I read to her was taken directly from out own Declaration of Independence.  I suddenly realized two truths: 1) my absent-mindedness may be genetic, and 2) yet again, Mom was right.

Granted, the words that I wrote in this draft were a clear indictment, claiming that this mindset of expansive government had plagued generation upon generation of free men in America, from the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and it threatens to undermine freedom for generations to come. The key phrases that I quoted – words that have echoed across the globe and throughout the pages of history – directly linked the sentiments of the Independence movement in 1776 to my concerns about how the federal government has continued to expand in its own power and diminish the power of the individual.

One such phrase, my favorite 45 of the nearly 1300 words in the Declaration of Independence – “…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” – is the primary basis for the established government in America. If and when the government threatens the rights of its citizens, it is the right, perhaps even the responsibility of the citizenry to shake loose the shackles of oppressive government and form a new government in its stead, based in their common principles and with the hope that it will not follow the same path.

Such was the hope of our founding fathers who, were they here today, seeing the power we have given the Federal government, would more than likely be of the opinion that a healthy revolution is in order. These great men would see hear of our military bases on foreign soil, our trade deficit and our national debt and shudder.  They would learn about the Federal Reserve system or the recent cap-and-trade bill and lament our short-sightedness. The thought of the abuses and implications of the PATRIOT act or FISA would ultimately cross the line between their quiet dissent and their open defiance.  Two-hundred-thirty-three years ago, our Founding Fathers stood outside of the Pennsylvania State House and declared themselves free men, risking their lives and the security of their countrymen in defiance of a government that would infringe upon that freedom.

Perhaps, on the anniversary of their defiant act, we, as citizens, as free men, should consider the implications of our government’s growth, and come to understand the danger that our liberty is in.  Perhaps it is time to write to our representatives in government and remind them of the roots of our Republic and how far we’ve strayed from them.  Perhaps it is time to exercise our rights through activism and time to speak out against the expansion of power and undermining of our freedom.

I wish a Happy Independence Day to our friends, our supporters, and our Nation, and thank you all for your continued support of We The People Politics.