The Declaration of Independence (Full Text)

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

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 shown 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.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies 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 do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

[Signed by] JOHN HANCOCK [President]

New Hampshire

JOSIAH BARTLETT,

WM. WHIPPLE,

MATTHEW THORNTON.

Massachusetts Bay

SAML. ADAMS,

JOHN ADAMS,

ROBT. TREAT PAINE,

ELBRIDGE GERRY

Rhode Island

STEP. HOPKINS,

WILLIAM ELLERY.

Connecticut

ROGER SHERMAN,

SAM’EL HUNTINGTON,

WM. WILLIAMS,

OLIVER WOLCOTT.

New York

WM. FLOYD,

PHIL. LIVINGSTON,

FRANS. LEWIS,

LEWIS MORRIS.

New Jersey

RICHD. STOCKTON,

JNO. WITHERSPOON,

FRAS. HOPKINSON,

JOHN HART,

ABRA. CLARK.

Pennsylvania

ROBT. MORRIS

BENJAMIN RUSH,

BENJA. FRANKLIN,

JOHN MORTON,

GEO. CLYMER,

JAS. SMITH,

GEO. TAYLOR,

JAMES WILSON,

GEO. ROSS.

Delaware

CAESAR RODNEY,

GEO. READ,

THO. M’KEAN.

Maryland

SAMUEL CHASE,

WM. PACA,

THOS. STONE,

CHARLES CARROLL of Carrollton.

Virginia

GEORGE WYTHE,

RICHARD HENRY LEE,

TH. JEFFERSON,

BENJA. HARRISON,

THS. NELSON, JR.,

FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE,

CARTER BRAXTON.

North Carolina

WM. HOOPER,

JOSEPH HEWES,

JOHN PENN.

South Carolina

EDWARD RUTLEDGE,

THOS. HAYWARD, JUNR.,

THOMAS LYNCH, JUNR.,

ARTHUR MIDDLETON.

Georgia

BUTTON GWINNETT,

LYMAN HALL,

GEO. WALTON.

NOTE.-Mr. Ferdinand Jefferson, Keeper of the Rolls in the Department of State, at Washington, says: ” The names of the signers are spelt above as in the facsimile of the original, but the punctuation of them is not always the same; neither do the names of the States appear in the facsimile of the original. The names of the signers of each State are grouped together in the facsimile of the original, except the name of Matthew Thornton, which follows that of Oliver Wolcott.”-Revised Statutes of the United States, 2d edition, 1878, p. 6.

Source:

Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States.

Government Printing Office, 1927.

House Document No. 398.

Selected, Arranged and Indexed by Charles C. Tansill

The Aim of Practical Politics…

A quote by H.I Mencken:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed—
and hence clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless
series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

(Thanks for the quote, Duane)

Happy Birthday, Morrissey!

 So Stephen Patrick Morrissey turns 50 today… 

 A man of words that have changed the world.  A lover of books, a reader complete… And indeed, one of the first Goths of our time.

His favorite author is Oscar Wilde and in some ways Morrissey himself is (or was) a modern day Wilde.  His talent abounds; his fertility with language and metaphor continue to sway and corrupt even the most steadfastly beige lives.  He’s one of my heroes, and today he reaches a half-century.

Morrissey began his career as the front man and lyricist for The Smiths (one of the most enduring and influential bands coming out of the 80’s).  He then went on to have a soaringly successful solo career that still continues to this day.

All lovers of books, reading, and writing would do well to consider Morrissey’s work.

 “All over this town

Yes, a low wind may blow

And I can see through everybody’s clothes

With no reason

To hide these words I feel

And no reason

To talk about the books I read

But still I do

That’s ’cause I’m a … Sister I’m a …poet

All over this town

Along this way

Outside the prison gates

I love the romance of crime

And I wonder

Does anybody feel the way I do ?

And is evil just something you are

Or something you do ?”

 

How literary some of his songs are:  This one’s called “Cemetery Gates”

A dreaded sunny day

so I meet you at the cemetry gates

Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day

so I meet you at the cemetry gates

Keats and Yeats are on your side

while Wilde is on mine

So we go inside and we gravely read the stones

all those people all those lives

where are they now ?

with loves, and hates

and passions just like mine

they were born

and then they lived and then they died

which seems so unfair

and I want to cry

You say: “ere thrice the sun hath done salutation to the dawn”

and you claim these words as your own

but I’m well-read, have heard them said

a hundred times (maybe less, maybe more)

if you must write prose/poems

the words you use should be your own

don’t plagiarize or take “on loans”

there’s always someone, somewhere

with a big nose, who knows

and who trips you up and laughs

when you fall

You say: “ere long done do does did “

words which could only be your own

you then produce the text

from whence was ripped

(some dizzy whore, 1804)

A dreaded sunny day

so let’s go where we’re happy

so I meet you at the cemetry gates

Keats and Yeats are on your side

A dreaded sunny day

so let’s go where we’re wanted

so I meet you at the cemetry gates

Keats and Yeats are on your side

but you lose

because Wilde is on mine

Kobe Owns Artest/Battier/Insert Name Here

Round 2, Game 3.  Kobe follows up his dazzling 40 point performance with a brilliant 33 in Houston.  Watch the buzzer beater from El Segundo…

I think tonight’s victory will be the death nail to Houston’s hopes.  I predict another Laker victory in game 4, which will all but decide the series as the Lakers come home to L.A. to finish it off.

Kobe’s still my MVP.

Iron & Wine plays Los Angeles (and I can’t go…)

The man who is my favorite singer/songwriter with an acoustic guitar and winner of the “most likely to be playing in Jeremy’s ear for the past several years” award is performing tonight and tomorrow night in Los Angeles.  It quite honestly puts a frown on my face to be unable to attend either show.  

His name is Sam Beam.  He’s worth a listen.  For more information see www.ironandwine.com.

The Labyrinth of Political Power

 

A “despot” is a tyrannical ruler.  “Despotism” is a government or political system in which the ruler exercises absolute power.

Who is the “ruler” of the United States?  Is it President Obama?  Is it Congress?  Is it the Supreme Court? Are we “ruled” by special interest groups?  What about wealthy corporations?  Or is it that we are ruled by a complex and convoluted (albeit effective) combination of them all?  I think this is so. 

I have never read a more succinct and accurate description of this complex labyrinth that is the current state of American government than Thomas Paine’s 1790 description of France’s government.  Read what follows and tell me if this is not an accurate depiction of modern day American government.

“When despotism has established itself for ages in a country, as in [The United States], it is not in the person of the [President] only that it resides.  It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal authority; but it is not so in practice, and in fact.  It has its standard everywhere.  Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom and usage…  The original… despotism resident in the person of the [President], divides and subdivides itself into a thousand shapes and forms, till at last the whole of it is acted by deputation.  This [is] the case in [the United States]; and against this species of despotism, proceeding on through an endless labyrinth of office till the source of it is scarcely perceptible, there is no mode of redress.  It strengthens itself by assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannizes under the pretence of obeying.”

The question then becomes: what are citizens to do under such a government to defend their freedom?  How are the people to check that massive government?  Can effective boundaries be put in place?  Or is it too late?  Do we have anymore a mode of redress?  Can even a million people standing shoulder to shoulder hold back a tide that is coming up the shore?

And once that tide has come up show me ten million standing who can force that tide to recede even an inch. 

“…an endless labyrinth of office till the source [of its power] is scarcely perceptible…“

“…It strengthens itself by assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannizes under the pretence of obeying.“

 

We perhaps need a revolution such that Paine described: “a revolution generated in rational contemplation of the rights of man…”

 

 

 

Morrissey Sings What I’m Unable To Say…

Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and listen to this song…  It’s how I feel.

I was dancing when I was twelve.

I was dancing when I was twelve.  

I was dancing when I was old. I was dancing when I was old.

I danced myself out of the womb.  I danced myself out of the womb.

Is it strange to dance so soon?  Is it strange to dance so soon?

Is it wrong to understand the fear that dwells inside a man?  

What’s it like to be alone?

I liken it to a balloon…

Oh. 

I’ll dance myself into the tomb.  I’ll dance myself into the tomb.

Is it strange to dance so soon?  Is it strange to dance so soon?

Is it wrong to understand the fear that dwells inside a man?

What’s it like to be alone?  I liken it to a balloon.

Oh.

It’s Still Kobe’s NBA… (38 against the Jazz)

You tell me another player who can do this seemingly at will…   A sheer joy to watch.

Obama, Words Must Mean Something: What About N. Korea?

 

Obama’s own words on April 2, 2009.  This was taken from a transcript of Obama’s speech in Prague on the very day that North Korea launched its missile:

“North Korea broke the rules once again by testing a rocket that could be used for long range missiles. This provocation underscores the need for action — not just this afternoon at the U.N. Security Council, but in our determination to prevent the spread of these weapons.

Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.”

If we’re to take Obama at his word what are we to come away thinking?  Because so far Obama has done absolutely nothing but talk concerning N. Korea’s missile launch.  Nearly a month has gone by since the launch and we’re still waiting for this “need for action.”    

Some might claim that Obama had to first wait for the United Nations response.  Well that has come and gone.  The U.N. did what it does best: drafted another resolution, just like the one N. Korea violated when it launched the rocket. The U.N. evidently likes writing papers regardless of their impotence.

So now what Obama?  You tried the “international community” and they’re not willing to take action.  So now what are you going to do being charged with the national defense (and the lion’s share of the defense of our allies as well)? 

Obama certainly understands the importance of North Korea’s actions in relation to terrorism around the world—we have heard from his very administration that N. Korea will more likely sell their technology to terrorists before they actually use it themselves. 

Obama said the following in the very same speech:

“…So, finally, we must ensure that terrorists never acquire a nuclear weapon. This is the most immediate and extreme threat to global security. One terrorist with one nuclear weapon could unleash massive destruction. Al Qaeda has said it seeks a bomb and that it would have no problem with using it. And we know that there is unsecured nuclear material across the globe. To protect our people, we must act with a sense of purpose without delay.”

Good talk, Obama.  Great words.  I agree with you 100%.  We must do all that we can to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.  It’s just as clear then that we need to keep those who would sell nuclear weapons to terrorists incapable of making such weapons. 

The question is this: where is the action without delay, where is the United States’ response to North Korea? 

Obama, you said it yourself: words must mean something.  Violations must be punished. 

(Maybe Obama should spend less time attempting to ‘punish’ the alleged ‘violations’ of Bush-era, American lawyers and more time going after actual enemies of the state.)

4 Reasons Obama Blew It: Bush Legal Adviser Inquiry

 

01.  Obama’s Justice Department will have to prove that the Bush lawyers didn’t believe their own legal arguments justifying the interrogation techniques.  In short, the legal basis for these potential prosecutions is extremely tenuous—I haven’t yet read anywhere what law or laws these lawyers are accused of breaking.

02.  The “hearings” already being talked about will amount to nothing more than public bullying and name calling (remember when the AIG executive was brought before Congress and told what a terrible person he was?)—a chance for liberals to berate and scorn these Bush lawyers.

03.  These inquiries are purely politically motivated: even those foaming at the mouth for prosecutions know that no convictions will be forthcoming.  They want to turn this into a public lambasting of the Bush-era policies and they’ll not hesitate to tarnish the careers of a few lawyers to do so.

04.  Obama has opened the door for future retributive party-mongering (if not worse).  Unless Obama intends to become President for life, what’s going to stop the next President from prosecuting some of Obama’s legal team/advisers/etc.?  (Answer: nothing).

These matters are, and ought to remain, matters of policy.  That’s why they are supposed to be left, rightly so, in the realm of politics, not criminal law. 

If liberals are so determined to publicly defame these lawyers, why don’t they have their Hollywood friends make a big-budget movie detailing the alleged criminal activity of these men and women.  We all know they have that ability. 

In short, leave politics and policy disagreement where it belongs: in the hands of the electorate.  These ideas are debated and considered and the people (ultimately) vote on them via elections, propositions, etc.  Obama should not have opened this door… it will be a fine time trying to close it again (if anyone’s ever able to do so).