- How much more will the American people endure?
-
- "Find out just what people will quietly submit to,
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will
be imposed on them, and these will continue till they are resisted with
either words or blows. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance
of those whom they oppress." --Frederick Douglass, African-American
slave, and abolitionist
-
- 229 Years Later Have Passed and True Freedom Still Eludes
Most of Us
-
- In support of the brave and intelligent citizens of Vermont
who recently passed a resolution to secede from the union, I decided to
update and modify our Declaration of Independence to fit the circumstances
we are facing in 2005. Despite the numerous distinctions between then and
now, in some significant ways, little has changed. Like our Founding Fathers,
I enumerated grievances of the Oppressed in my version of the Declaration,
and many are similar to those spelled out in the original version drafted
in 1776. Even the name of the lead Oppressor remains the same.
-
- I realize this updated Declaration has no authority,
and that such a movement towards independence from our corrupt plutocracy
would require significant grassroots support and organization to be successful.
However, I believe it is crucial to fan the dying embers of the American
spirit of independence in a time of unprecedented apathy, conformity, and
complicity in the crimes of our abomination of a federal government. George
Bush is not fit to lick the boots of a man like Thomas Paine, yet he is
one of the most powerful men on the planet. With the might of the US government
at their disposal, he and his loyal minions have committed duplicitous,
larcenous, and homicidal acts virtually on a continual basis throughout
their reign. In a symbolic act of defiance against King George, and an
act of support for social justice and human rights, I have signed my revision
of the Declaration.
-
- Thomas Paine was one of the few Founding Fathers who
championed the rights of the "common people". Paine recognized
the universality of human rights, which is why he has not been enshrined
in the "American pantheon" with the likes of Washington and Hamilton.
Were he alive today, he would once again be vehemently agitating for change
as he caught scent of the overwhelming stench emanating from the seemingly
grand epicenter of inhumanity rising from the banks of the Potomac River.
In deference to Paine's spirit, I wrote this revised version of the Declaration
of Independence.
-
- The Declaration of Independence of the Fifty Colonies
and their Poor and Middle Class Inhabitants from the Imperialist Federal
Government of the United States of America
-
- The unanimous Declaration of the Fifty Colonies of America,
-
- When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary
for one people to dissolve the political chains which have enslaved them
to 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 of each person's
understanding and choosing entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions
to mankind demands that they need declare the causes impelling them to
separate.
-
- We hold these truths to be self-evident and irrefutable,
that all Humans are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable
Human Rights (as delineated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
at http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html). ---That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among the People, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the Governed, --That whenever any Form of Government
usurps powers without the Governed's consent and 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 foundations 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 shewn, that Humans 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 obscene abuses and heinous crimes, pursuing invariably the same Object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right
and responsibility to depose such Government, and to provide new Guards
for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these
Fifty Colonies, their Poor and Middle Classes, and most of the rest of
the world; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter
their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of
the United States [George II], and that of his predecessors [of the Royal
Houses of Elephant and Donkey alike] dating back to the reign of King Richard
of the Royal Family of Nixon, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations
[by kings and their trusted advisors], all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Colonies and their Poor
and Middle Class inhabitants. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to
a candid world.
-
- They [King George II and his royal advisors: Lords Cheney,
Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, and Lady Rice] have refused their
Assent to Laws and Policies, most wholesome and necessary for the public
good.
-
- They have engaged in acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide
in the city of New Orleans through acts of criminal neglect and gross mismanagement
of the aftermath of a natural disaster, the willful creation of a diaspora
of the poor Black inhabitants of New Orleans, the suspension of labor laws
which would have ensured fair wages to those rebuilding the city, and the
dispensation of generous federal contracts to crony corporations to rebuild
a city favorable to the interests of the wealthy.
-
- They manipulated facts and presented lies to the American
People and to Congress to gain necessary approval of a "preventive",
illegal war against the sovereign nation of Iraq on the shifting premises
that this nation posed an immediate threat to our national security, that
the Iraqi people needed a champion to topple a ruthless dictator, and that
their purpose was to spread "freedom and liberty". It has now
come to light that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, had no
connections with Osama bin Laden, and was little or no threat to the United
States. They knew this prior to the invasion. They subverted a government
led by a former US ally whom the US supported when it knew he was committing
genocide. They installed a puppet Iraqi regime fortified by 140,000 US
military personnel and call it "Democracy". They are responsible
for the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Their hands drip with the
blood of innocents slaughtered using monies from our Treasury and the blood,
sweat and tears of our children.
-
- They recruited and trained US military personnel under
the pretext that they would be engaged in defending their nation. After
enticing young men and women to serve based on blatant lies, They thrust
them into imperial conquests like the one in Iraq. They are responsible
for the sacrifice of over 2,000 American lives which They sacrificed at
their sacred alter of the almighty Dollar.
-
- They have continued to perpetuate, protect, and expand
the powers of corrupt, avaricious corporations These cornucopias of avidity
for wealth and power pay sub-standard wages, offer minimal benefits to
their employees, increasingly utilize inexpensive "offshore"
labor, manufacture products in "sweat shops" which egregiously
violate the human rights of their employees, profiteer during wars and
natural disasters, rape the environment and plunder our precious natural
resources, utilize "creative accounting methods" to increase
their stock value, capitalize on laws enabling them to create hostile environments
for unions, demand virtually endless increases in corporate welfare, and
strangle competition through mergers and acquisitions accomplished with
their over-inflated stocks.
-
- They have perpetuated and expanded an executive branch
of government which is in many ways indistinguishable from the leviathan
corporations and wealthy elite which it serves and represents.
-
- They have forsaken their primary responsibility, which
is to preserve the universal human rights of their citizenry, and to secure
its general welfare. They have rapidly eroded federal domestic programs
promoting health care, education, basic infrastructure, and housing, while
directing unconscionable sums of public monies to the military industrial
complex comprised of current and former government officials and the wealthy
elite. They seize the lion's share of taxes from their citizens and spend
obscene amounts to finance a grotesquely powerful military [and their imperial
adventures], while a significant number of their citizens want for proper
education, housing, transportation, and even nourishment.
-
- They have created a rogue military state which engages
in terrorism of such magnitude that terrorist acts committed by the Iraqi
Resistance, while equally as morally objectionable, are modest in comparison.
-
- They have, through their willful neglect of the general
welfare, allowed 46 million Americans to languish with no health insurance,
13% of their citizenry to experience poverty, 3% to experience homelessness,
24% of their Black populace to live in poverty, and 6% of their citizens
to experience unemployment. These glaring blights on humanity are inexcusable
in the wealthiest nation in history.
-
- They have continued to loosen federal regulations on
the "free market" economy, thus further enriching their plutocratic
allies while impoverishing more and more Americans. They have worked tenaciously
to perpetuate the exportation of Neoliberal economic policies to Latin
America, crushing economies throughout that region, and creating chasms
between their rich and poor.
-
- They have employed chemical weapons in Iraq, violating
numerous treaties, conventions, and International Laws.
-
- They have exposed their own soldiers and the civilian
inhabitants of occupied Iraq to the dangers of depleted uranium.
-
- They have employed a variety of illegal and unethical
means to manipulate and taint the results of two presidential elections
to ensure their ascendancy to the seat of power.
-
- They have enacted laws and policies hostile to science
and intellectual viewpoints, thus leading our nation down a path of ignorance
and superstition.
-
- They have grossly usurped their powers by intimidating
Congress into enacting the Patriot Act, decimating Habeas Corpus and due
process by illegally detaining Jose Padilla [an American citizen] for three
years, and violating virtually everything for which the Bill of Rights
stands by illegally detaining, torturing and murdering accused terrorists
at Abu Gharib, Guantanamo Bay, and other undisclosed locations around the
world.
-
- They violated Posse Comitatus in New Orleans and have
since stated their intention to crush it by deploying US military personnel
on a wide scale in future domestic disasters.
-
- They have consistently rewarded or promoted those members
of their Royal Court who have committed criminal or grossly incompetent
acts.
-
- They have pillaged the public Treasury, dispersing tax
monies to their cronies and collaborators in their corrupt schemes. They
have created an astronomical national debt which will hang from the necks
of future generations as a millstone of astounding proportions.
-
- They have virtually relieved themselves and their wealthy
compatriots of their tax obligations. In so doing, They have placed the
burden of filling the public coffers on the backs of those who benefit
least from their governance [the Poor and Middle Classes].
-
- They have financed and enabled the ruthless Israeli colonial
occupation of Palestinian territory, and have allowed elements closely
aligned with the radical Likud to shape their foreign policy decisions,
particularly in the Middle East.
-
- We [those amongst us who do not remain entranced by the
powerful propaganda of the mainstream media] have Petitioned for Redress
in humble, reasonable terms in a variety of ways. Our repeated Petitions
have been answered by repeated injury. A Prince of the American Royal Family
of Bush, 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 attentions to our brethren
in the federal government, their corporate allies or the wealthy elite.
We have warned them from time to time of their attempts to extend an unwarrantable
jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of our inalienable rights derived
from Natural Law, the US Constitution, and the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. We have appealed to their senses of justice and magnanimity,
and we have beseeched them to disavow these usurpations based on our common
kindred. They 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 Humanity, Enemies in War, in Peace
Friends.
-
- We, therefore, the Representatives of the Fifty Colonies
of America and their Poor and Middle Classes, 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 Fifty Colonies and United Peoples are, and of Right
ought to be Free and Independent of the United Stated Federal Government;
that We are Absolved from Allegiance to the Federal Crown, and that all
political connections between them and us, is and ought to be totally dissolved;
and that as Free and Independent People forming a true Constitutional Republic,
we have full Power to provide for the General Welfare of the Populace,
to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and
to 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 (by the Higher Power of each person's understanding),
we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred
Honor.
-
- Kansas
-
- Jason Miller
-
- Jason Miller is a 38 year old activist writer with a
degree in liberal arts. He works as a loan counselor in the transportation
industry, and is a husband with three sons. His affiliations include Amnesty
International and the ACLU. He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com
or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
|
