Posted on 01/04/2015 8:49:13 AM PST by Jacquerie
To quote from the Declaration of Independence anymore at FreeRepublic is to be regarded as something of a dullard. The timeless maxims of our revolution no longer seem to ring true, for if they did, there would be far more discussion at this forum on how to implement these truths in a nation that has largely forgotten them.
As we lurch from one election cycle to another, and speculate two years out whether the GOP presidential nominee will be a conservative or rino, it is worthwhile to step back from politics for a moment, and consider government. By that, I mean taking a brief look at the structure of our rulings institutions rather than the people we send to them.
The genius of republican liberty demands not only that all power be derived from the people, but that those entrusted with it should be kept in dependence on the people by a short duration of their appointment, and that even during this short period, trust should be placed not in a few but in a number of hands*.
Is American government in the hands of the few or many? I say it is in the hands of the president, who rules through diktats designed by myriad radical leftists absolutely disconnected from the people and society they seek to crush. Regulations with force of law by the thousands are issued by executive secretaries not remotely responsible to congress or us. Throw in a judiciary that flicks aside irritating state constitutional amendments as if they were unwanted white lint on a black sweater, and it is clear that who we vote for every even calendar year is largely irrelevant to restoration of republican liberty.
Rather than govern, our institutions rule; they no longer serve their purpose, to protect republican liberty.
As the world’s premier conservative website, viewed daily by many thousands of conservatives and leftists alike, I hope going forward that more attention at FreeRepublic is directed toward that which matters, the restoration of republican liberty.
* Federalist 37.
I think the founders would agree with this, “A people unwilling to use extreme violence to obtain or preserve their liberty deserves the tyrants that rule them” SP
Well said and especially relevant as we stand on the verge of another RINO-infested congressional year.
Our rulers fear us.
How many billions of rounds of ammo have they recently purchased? When the Bamster visits a town, security demands it be shut down. Even his Rasputin, Valerie Jarrett, gets Secret Service protection. We have to be wanded if not frisked in order to enter a public building. The list goes on.
Good essay and worthy of a bump.
While I agree that the President has largely usurped most of the power of Fedgov, it is wise to remember that even he is beholden to the monied interests like Goldman Sachs and those who control the financial system.
It is they that drive the inexorable march toward socialism which allows them to take ownership of virtually everything and leave the people with an ever smaller piece of the pie.
I believe what our would be rulers are discovering is that their crude attempts to “nudge” us into violence have had a greater effect on their libtard minions than it has on us. Hence each attempt to brand us with the latest round of violence actually turns out to be someone more libtard than Tea Party. What they have so carefully crafted would blow up on them if we should begin to en masse refuse to respect our obey feral gummint actions. 100 million of us unruly Americans would be unmanageable for the severest would be tyrant.
Well, have you considered a solution? The Framers’ bicameral congress divided legislative power between the people and the states.
Only by dullards.
“These communities [the Fathers of the Republic], by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’
“This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures.
“Yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.
“Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.
“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me — take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever — but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man’s success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity — the Declaration of American Independence.”
— Abraham Lincoln, speech in Lewiston, Illinois, August 17, 1858, four days before his first historic debate with Stephen A. Douglas, Printed in the Chicago Press and Tribune.
“We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed.”
— President Calvin Coolidge, Speech given in Philadelphia, PA, July 4, 1926, on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
I kind of agree with what wastoute just said.
“What they have so carefully crafted would blow up on them if we should begin to en masse refuse to respect our obey feral gummint actions. 100 million of us unruly Americans would be unmanageable for the severest would be tyrant.”
It has already begun in NY. Thousands are refusing to register their firearms. Passive resistance.
“[T]he Declaration of Independence is the RINGBOLT to the chain of your nation’s destiny...The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in. all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain, broken, and all is lost. Cling...to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.”
— Frederick Douglass, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July speech, July 5, 1852
" The timeless maxims of our revolution no longer seem to ring true, for if they did, there would be far more discussion at this forum on how to implement these truths in a nation that has largely forgotten them."
"Forgotten" them? Or, have those truths been effectively "erased" from the American mind by the so-called "progressives" who were allowed by the rest of us to dominate and control what has passed as the "education" of our youth?
Back in 2010, someone posted in this Forum an article citing statements by John Paul II and Cardinal Lustiger which made the observation that Europe was suffering "from a false story about itself, saying "". . . the challenge we face today is to recognize, with John Paul II and Cardinal Lustiger, that Europe (and indeed the entire West) is suffering from a false story about itself, and about the relationship of biblical religion to its formation and its history.”
America, in particular, has allowed the progressive movement to effectively erase from its collective memory the remarkable foundation of ideas which produced the season of liberty it enjoyed for over 200 years. It, too, has embraced a "false story about itself," because of that censorship.
Technology has now outpaced these censors, however, and what has been erased can be instantly restored, with the click of a mouse.
Is Divine Providence at work to outwit the enemies of liberty? The collection of thinkers and liberty lovers who appeared at the same time on the same relatively small area of land in America in the late 1700's were able to write and speak the ideas of liberty, derived from centuries of wisdom literature, and to capsulize those ideas in documents which, if relied upon today, could continue to expand liberty and prosperity.
Their ideas are just as revolutionary today as they were then, and they are accessible in a way never possible before.
John Quincy Adams enumerated the nation's noble history in his New York City 1839 "Jubilee" Anniversary speech, and concluded that address with these words:
"Fellow-citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Declaration of independence. Your Mount Ebal, is the confederacy of separate state sovereignties, and your Mount Gerizim is the Constitution of the United States. In that scene of tremendous and awful solemnity, narrated in the Holy Scriptures, there is not a curse pronounced against the people, upon Mount Ebal, not a blessing promised them upon Mount Gerizim, which your posterity may not suffer or enjoy, from your and their adherence to, or departure from, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, practically interwoven in the Constitution of the United States. Lay up these principles, then, in your hearts, and in your souls - bind them for signs upon your hands, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes - teach them to your children, speaking of them when sitting in your houses, when walking by the way, when lying down and when rising up - write them upon the doorplates of your houses, and upon your gates - cling to them as to the issues of life - adhere to them as to the cords of your eternal salvation. So may your children's children at the next return of this day of jubilee, after a full century of experience under your national Constitution, celebrate it again in the full enjoyment of all the blessings recognized by you in the commemoration of this day, and of all the blessings promised to the children of Israel upon Mount Gerizim, as the reward of obedience to the law of God." here
What President, Senator, or Congressman today has the courage to declare what this man who served under that Constitution in many capacities, including as President and, until his death, as Congressman declared in New York City on that day in 1839?
Any citizen today can access the writings and speeches of the founding period. There is no excuse for ignorance.
Lovers of liberty can begin to "implement these truths" by creatively exposing youth and current generations to those "truths" which have been hidden from them in the libraries, schools, and public discourse of the past several decades.
I can’t speak for everyone but I can speak for myself, I enjoy reading the threads that are about our history, our founding, the Constitution et cetera.
The thing is, I have little formal education and feel rather foolish if I try and comment or express much on those threads. That doesn’t mean that I’m not reading and taking in the threads and comments.
I am very much for the Article V but I think there are two different opinions of the issue and it doesn’t seem either side is going to sway the other away from their position. My inarticulate self especially can’t make headway in that area.
I don’t think the number of replies to a thread necessarily reflects the interest or importance we may hold for a thread or topic that is posted.
I will usually post to a more casual topic because I don’t think I need to be as precise and it is more comfortable for me. There are some serious topics that kick-start a strong opinion of mine and I’m liable to spout on those threads when I shouldn’t.
Anyhow, that’s my take on all of this...
It is amazing so many young volunteer to serve in the armed forces, to defend that which they are educated to despise.
FWIW, if I had to bug out and keep only two, I'd select The Federalist Papers in Modern Language, by Mary E Webster, and The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, by Gordon S. Wood.
Warning: Read these two and you will be irretrievably hooked and end up with a stack of related texts that reach to the ceiling.
That would be of a great help to me. Thank you for the tip, Jacquerie. I received a couple of books for Christmas and I will purchase the ones you recommended once I've finished reading my presents.
As a high school student, I made the mistake of picking up The Federalist. I found Hamilton’s prose especially dense then as I do now. I know of no other founder/framer more difficult to understand in the original.
Wood is a joy.
Cliven Bundy proved that even extreme violence isn’t necessary if The People will just STAND UP and say “No! Not one more inch!”
The key to doing so is to actually mean it. There has to be a threat of extreme violence. Otherwise, they won’t listen.
I’ve said since the Bundy Ranch incident that all we need to do to restore a constitutional republic is to go to D.C. and demand that they leave or be physically removed and sent on their way. The states can send a portion of their elected legislatures to temporarily serve. Then we can hold an A5 convention and get back to limited government.
Organizing that effort is the problem.
It isn’t the act of extreme violence that works it’s the willingness to apply it if need be.
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