When Americans Understood the Declaration of Independence

Lew Rockwell

The Fourth of July was not always a national celebration of the militarization of American society and of the federal government’s never-ending quest for world domination (disguised as "defending our interests abroad"). Americans did not always attend church services on the Sunday before the Fourth of July to "honor" their "military heroes" and pray that they may kill many more human beings in other countries that have done them no harm. Americans once actually read and understood the Declaration of Independence for what it was: a declaration of secession from the British empire and a roadmap for opposing a highly centralized, militaristic empire of the sort the U.S. government has become.

The Declaration of Independence was the ultimate secessionist or states’ rights document. "Governments are instituted among men," Thomas Jefferson wrote, for the sole purpose of securing God-given, "unalienable" rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Moreover, governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed" and nowhere else. And "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 . . ."
The way in which "the People" were to express their consent (or lack thereof) was through state and local political organizations. Hence, in the final paragraph of the Declaration of Independence Jefferson wrote that: "We . . . the Representatives of the united States of America . . . are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."

It is important to note that the word "united" is not capitalized but "States" is, and that the individual states are described as "Free and Independent." Thus, the free, independent, and sovereign states were united in the cause of secession from the British empire. The phrase "united States" did not mean, and does not mean in any of the founding documents, the "United States government," as is commonly believed today. It is always in the plural to signify that the free and independent states are united in their common cause of protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence, each American state was sovereign in the same sense that Great Britain, France, and Spain were sovereign states. It was through "representatives of the united States" that the consent of the people was to be expressed (or not). 

It was Abraham Lincoln, who Murray Rothbard once described as a masterful "liar, conniver, and manipulator," whose rhetoric began to fog the understanding of Americans of their Declaration of Independence. Lincoln’s twisted language in The Gettysburg Address that focused solely on the words "all men are created equal" in the Declaration, were designed to reinterpret the preeminent secessionist document as an anti-secessionist document. It was an attempt to fool Northern voters into believing in the absurd notion that he was a Jeffersonian. 

Not that Lincoln ever believed that all men were – or should be considered to be – equal in any sense. As he stated in the September 18, 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas: "I will say than that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that here is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race" (emphasis added).-[Full Article]

Down on the Fourth of July: the United States of gloom

UK Telegraph

The Stars and Stripes flying in Beaufort, South Carolina. Photo: Toby Harnden

NEWS REVIEW: America’s deepening recession and widespread pessimism about the country’s prospects add a bitter note to Independence Day, reports Toby Harnden, US Editor.

Across America today, people will gather for barbecues in their backyards, parades through their towns and firework displays lighting up the night sky.

They’ll be celebrating Independence Day – the birthday of the United States and the 235th anniversary of shaking off the oppressive yoke of British rule.

On this day in 1776 a group of 13 colonies broke away to found a new nation free to govern itself as it saw fit, pledging that each citizen would have the unalienable right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. A nation, as Americans are apt to declare without equivocation, which became the greatest on the face of the earth.

That’s the good news. On the flip side, however, a country whose hallmark has always been a sense of irrepressible optimism is in the grip of unprecedented uncertainty and self-doubt.

With the United States mired in three foreign wars, beaten down by an economy that shows few signs of emerging from deep recession and deeply disillusioned with President Barack Obama, his Republican challengers and Congress, the mood is dark...[Full Article]

Historical fact: Independence Day is a celebration of freedom from government tyranny

Sunday, July 03, 2011
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) Happy July 4th, my fellow Americans. It's the Independence Day weekend! Independence from what, you might ask? As even the somewhat revisionist history taught in public schools readily admits, July 4th is a celebration of independence from government tyranny under British rule.

And what kind of government tyranny, specifically? Well, the kind that involves warrantless searches of peoples' homes, where government agents could just waltz right into your private home for no reason and conduct a search without even getting a court-issued warrant. That was a form of government terrorism waged against the people, and when the USA declared its independence from British rule, it adopted a new rule at home that specifically forbade such tyrannical government actions.

That rule is called The Fourth Amendment. It protects citizens from illegal searches and seizures undertaken by a tyrannical lawless government.

Yet, sadly, in just the last decade, the U.S. government has now thrown out the Fourth Amendment and is back to operating exactly like the British tyrants we defeated to earn our independence in the first place! Now in the United States, TSA agents at the airport conduct illegal searches of travelers on a routine basis, with no search warrants issued, no just cause and no legal justification whatsoever. The TSA has become to modern-day America what the British tyrants were to the colonials in the 18th century.

But it gets even better. Today, police in Indiana now have the court-affirmed "right" to conduct warrantless house-to-house searches without any just cause whatsoever. The state supreme court there has ruled that police no longer need warrants to break into private homes and search them for anything they want, at any hour, for any reason! (http://www.naturalnews.com/032485_I...)

Even worse, courts are also ruling that you cannot resist an unlawful entry into your home by a police officer -- even if that police officer is committing a crime by breaking into your home! (http://www.naturalnews.com/032435_F...)

Police brutality is now so widespread and common across the U.S. that police are beating, arresting, tasering and charging speech-impaired teenagers with resisting arrest! (http://www.prisonplanet.com/police-...)

Some police, it turns out, are so uneducated that they interpret a speech impediment as some kind of mockery or "disrespect."

Not all cops are bad, of course. Most cops are hard-working citizens who perform a thankless job for wildly insufficient pay. They put their lives on the line to help keep our local communities safe, and they deserve our thanks for that effort. But increasingly, the bad cops seem to be losing their cool and forgetting they are supposed to serve the public, not terrorize the public like some sort of badge-wearing gang of government thugs.

Tenth Amendment protections

After the War of Independence, other rules were written into the new U.S. Constitution to make sure the People could never again be abused by government tyrants. The Tenth Amendment provided for states' rights, limiting the role of the federal government in controlling local issues.

But the federal government now says it has supreme power over all states, and it forces itself onto the states through things like airport screening programs (TSA) and the nationwide prohibition of marijuana, involving federal DEA agents raiding medical marijuana facilities that have been legally licensed by the state. The federal government, in other words, respects no state law whatsoever.

Efforts are under way to reassert states' rights and nullify the tyrannical control of the federal government. See www.NullifyNow.com and learn about The Tenth Amendment Center and its work to protect the freedom of citizens in every state.

Obamacare and economic tyranny

The federal government is also now engaged in economic tyranny by forcing citizens to purchase a health insurance policy from a failed "sick care" system that doesn't even work! It's called "Obamacare," and the courts are ruling that the federal government now has this power to mandate that all Americans buy whatever private product the government orders them to buy!

Take this one step further, and soon you'll see the government ordering all Americans to buy an American-made car, or buy a government-mandated life insurance policy, or buy a new house to lift the housing market. Under this bizarre interpretation of the Commerce Clause there is absolutely nothing the government can't control in your life as long as it can argue there is some economic impact on others. The government can even force you to stop growing corn on your own farm, even if you don't sell it to anyone! (http://www.naturalnews.com/030799_f...)

Those who refuse to buy what the government orders them to buy will be economically punished or even imprisoned in "debtors prisons." This is the new America, where the government can now order you how to spend the every-shrinking portion of your income that they didn't already confiscate in taxes.

Free Speech is routinely censored in America

Not to leave the First Amendment untouched, America's current tyrannical government also strongly censors free speech. Remember all the people who were arrested for slow-dancing at the Jefferson Memorial? (http://www.naturalnews.com/032569_A...)

Or how about the U.S. government's arrest and imprisonment of nutritional supplement manufacturers who tell the truth about the health benefits of their products on their own websites? (http://www.naturalnews.com/029901_p...)

On top of that, we now have "free speech zones" where you're limited to protesting off-camera and out of the way of any important event. Plus, the federal government is actively raiding and taking down websites that merely link to other websites where you can download movies or pay-per-view events. This is being done without any warrant, any trial, or any due process whatsoever.

Free Speech is under assault, and it doesn't matter whether your speech is on the left, the right or the middle -- if it questions the government's illegal actions or policies in any way, you will be targeted for censorship.

Illegal wars

To top it all off, President Obama is now engaged in an illegal war against Libya, and the man is so stupendously arrogant that he says his actions don't even need to be legal under the Constitution at all!

"There may be a time in which there was a serious question as to whether the War Powers Resolution was constitutional," Obama said in a recent press conference. "I don't have to get to the question." (http://cnsnews.com/news/article/oba...)

In other words, Obama thinks he's the king, just like the King of England who we fought a revolution against in the 18th century. Obama thinks he does not need to follow ANY law, thereby violating the very tenant of our Republic, which is a nation based on laws that apply to everyone, including those who govern.

When the sitting President of the USA declares that his actions don't even need to be reviewed for their constitutionality, the republic is lost. Doesn't this guy even remember that he SWORE to uphold and defend the Constitution during his initial swearing in as President?

The Patriot Act - George Bush's gift to freedom

Any discuss of freedom in America must, of course, include a reference to the Patriot Act, signed into law by President Bush in the aftermath of the false-flag 9/11 attack. The Patriot Act is to freedom what napalm is to peace.

Specifically, the Patriot Act revokes all the rights enumerated by the Bill of Rights for any person the government accuses of being involved in "terrorism" of any kind, which can include protests by animal rights advocates or even just lighting farts with your fraternity buddies while sitting on an airplane.

The Patriot Act takes America back to the days of the King's rule where only the King is granted the right to rule (by God, no less) and yet he himself is subject to no rule (no law). This is the situation in America today, where government agents such as the FDA, DEA, TSA, FCC, FTC, EPA, USDA and many others routinely engage in criminal acts against the People, against nature and against common law. Yet they continue to get away with these crimes because they answer to no law (and the People never hold them accountable).

What are you celebrating this July 4th?

In summary, if you celebrate Independence Day in America, you are celebrating the result of a violent revolutionary war against a tyrannical government whose crimes against the People have all been re-created right here at home, via the American government!

Where we once fought for independence, we now lay down and surrender our freedoms. The masses of sheeple have forgotten what it means to live free, and they have allowed a tyrannical government to treat them with the same disdain that the British empire once dealt out as routine.

The situation has become so perverse in America that the very act of being "patriotic" is now considered a fringe idea, almost smacking of so-called "home-grown terrorism." In the same vein, some Big Government advocates are even suggesting that celebrating Independence Day is, all by itself, some sort of evil. The editor of one prominent progressive magazine (I'm not linking to it because they don't deserve the link credit) even said recently, "My heart does not beat faster at the strains of the Star Spangled Banner, much less at the sight of F-16s flying overhead to kick off the show. You see, I don't believe in patriotism. You can call me unpatriotic if you’d like, but really I’m anti-patriotic."

In one sense, this editor makes a valid point that mindless patriotism as some sort of worship of a warped government agenda (a la Hitler's patriotism) is a destructive thing, indeed. But Independence Day isn't about mindless patriotism; it's about recognizing the sacrifices our forefathers (and mothers) made to deliver a free republic to us that we might hold on to for more than just a couple of centuries. Sadly, what was once a free republic has now become a Big Government police state. And the 4th of July has, for nearly all Americans, become nothing more than an excuse to eat cancer-causing hot dogs while watching pretty colors explode in the sky.

Big Government is the enemy of independence and freedom

Paul Revere once warned, "The British are coming!" What he probably could never imagine is that, in 2011, a far more appropriate warning might be, "The government is coming!"

Batten down your doors and shutter your windows; bring in the dog and dim your lights. The government is coming to your home next, and they need no warrant nor even any justification whatsoever to shoot you in your own hallway (http://www.patriotactionnetwork.com...), or kidnap your teenage daughter (http://www.naturalnews.com/032091_M...) simply because you refuse to medicate her with a dangerous psychotropic drug.

The law enforcement arm of Big Government will threaten to shoot you if you videotape their tyrannical crimes against the People (http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/06/...). They will taser you if you're a paraplegic and therefore can't get up out of your wheelchair (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_...). If you don't grovel to the false authority of the government today, you may be assaulted, intimidated, censored and then charged with interfering with police business merely for trying to behave as an informed citizen and serve the greater good of society.

At the same time, the federal government is the criminal element that's arming Mexican drug gangs with tens of thousands of firearms that are now being used in crimes back in the USA. This has now been openly admitted by ATF agents who were ordered to do so by Washington officials, and NaturalNews will be publishing a detailed account of this story soon.

The bottom line in all this is that celebrating Independence Day used to actually mean something, but today it is a shallow display of fireworks to a populace that has forgotten what any of it means -- a population that grovels at the feet of its masters and welcomes yet more tyranny with each passing election. Who will they vote for in the next election? Unless the candidate's name ends with "Paul," it hardly matters, because nearly every politician in Washington today is a traitor to the founding principles of America -- and a traitor to freedom itself.

Nearly all of them voted for the Patriot Act, for example, and they keep voting to extend it every chance they get. There' never enough security, it seems, in a nation that propagandizes a falsified "war on terror" as its primary strategy for enslaving its own people. The corruption of Washington D.C. -- and the name Harry Reid comes to mind for some reason -- is truly legendary.

We are living through the final days of the Roman Empire, just as it began to collapse. History will wonder how so many of us could have been so blind to what was happening right in front of us. The answer, of course, is that the people were too blinded by the fireworks to stop and think about what they are meant to symbolize.

And yes, in case you were wondering, the feature picture for this article is a picture of me standing behind an American flag that blocks my mouth. The symbolism here should be obvious: That in today's Big Government political environment, we're all supposed to believe that being "patriotic" means shutting our mouths and saying nothing.

Nonsense, I say. Patriotism goes hand in hand with speaking our minds. Only a free nation is a nation worth fighting for.

26 Percent Of Americans Don’t Know U.S. Declared Independence From Great Britain

Think Progress

According to a new poll by Marist, more than a quarter of Americans couldn’t correctly identify the country from which the United States declared its independence. While 74 percent correctly named Great Britain, 20 percent said they weren’t sure and six percent named other countries. In the South, 32 percent of respondents either responded incorrectly or weren’t sure. The poll comes on the heels of test scores that showed few American students gaining proficiency in U.S. history, a problem presidential candidate Rick Santorum blamed on the “conscious effort” by “the left” to keep Americans uninformed. (HT: The Hotline’s Steve Shepard)