The document that got us on the road to freedom from British tyranny was the Declaration Of Independence. Most all of us have read it but few remember anything past the opening of the second paragraph. I encourage you all to read it here. I wanted to update it just a bit, or rather to tie it to modern events.
We hold these truths to be self-evident,
These truths are pre-existing and do not depend upon a government granting or upholding them
that all men are created equal,
This has been changed to uphold the Rights of certain classes/groups of people above others
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
Our Government believes they are the grantor of these Rights
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Life and Liberty are now both rutinely denied while Happiness is contsrued as libertine-ism
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
Governments are to "secure" Rights,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
It has rightly been said that ALL governments are consented to, even dictatorships, this does not imply that our Gov' has actual consent. Consent under duress is not consent.
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,
Is there any doubt that our own Government is destructive to these ends? Perhaps the only Right the Gov now allows us is the Right to not quarter soldiers, perhaps simply because it has never suited the needs of the Gov to abbrogate that one.
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.
Obviously we see with the so-called Civil War that our Gov doesnt abide by this either.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Think tyranny. No tyrant could rule if the people found the evil too much to bear, they would rise up and overthrow him.
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.
Our Founding Fathers viewed it as our Moral Imperative to stand against such acts.
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.
Now was their time to rise up, having endured the overbearing British rule