A Declaration of Independence |
for Our Times |
In the course of current events, it has
become necessary for a free people to reassert the principles that have, over
the course of more than two centuries, led them to greatness, and to consign to
the dustbin of history the political class that would dismantle that grand
experiment in self-government, individual liberty and free market capitalism.
For too long, our political class and those who beg for their largesse have
forsaken the principles that have propelled this nation to greatness and now
threaten the very foundations of that society and system of government. For too
many years, those politicians have purchased our compliance and votes with our
own tax dollars and doled it out to the enemies of freedom. Under President Obama and an out-of-control Congress, our government
threatens to bankrupt our nation with debt so massive that it will enslave our
children, grandchildren and all future generations in an odious effort to
solidify its hold on the body politic.
For too long, we have sat idle, expecting
others to preserve that system from the encroachments of those for whom liberty
and personal responsibility are anathema. The time has now come to rise up from
our couches and strato-loungers, to break free from
our baseball and videogames, our computers and cable television (Fox News
excepted), and other idle diversions, and to assume the role of defenders of
liberty that the founders of this Great Nation entrusted to us. In respect for
the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, we must declare the causes which impel
us to take our country back from the forces of liberal fascism, progressivism,
socialism, and statism which, even now, are breaking down the doors of this
once noble edifice.
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, the Fruits of One’s Labor, and the Pursuit of Happiness. — That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of those for whom the franchise is more than just a
casual act facilitated by an ACORN voter registration drive, but a sacred
obligation to cast an informed vote, cognizant that citizenship involves both
rights and responsibilities to the country that gave you birth, or welcomed you
here legally.
That whenever any Form of Government
becomes arrogant and destructive of these ends, and abandons the limits which
the founders placed upon it, it is the Right of the People to institute a new
Administration which will uphold its sacred responsibility to protect the
rights and liberties of a free people. As responsible and free citizens, we
must never place comfort or the security of a government hand-out over the
liberties which were so lovingly and sacrificially bequeathed to us by our
ancestors.
That democracy, by itself, is just an
instrument, not the end for which we strive as a free people. In truth, a bare
majority can enact policies oppressive to the rights of the minority, contrary
to right reason, and threatening to their liberty and property, unless
restrained by Constitutional safeguards.
Over the course of the twentieth century,
we have allowed government to grow far beyond the limitations once assigned to
it by our founding fathers. Yet, with each government program, and with each
regulatory excess, we have become progressively more complacent and compliant
as a people. As government and its largesse have grown, so have our collective
energy and initiative been diminished. As our individual responsibilities and
genuine compassion have withered, so too have our liberties.
We have, indeed, sacrificed our freedom
for a handful of worthless trinkets and, in doing so, transformed millions of
otherwise able individuals, with God-given potential, into helpless government
charges who demand mortgage payments, free or government-subsidized housing,
free gas, health care and food--all at public expense. Such entitlements,
divorced from responsibilities, make slaves of the givers and incompetent
children of the recipients.
We recognize that the power to tax is the
power to destroy and that once a citizenry yields up to government the right to
tax income, that government has power over the lives and labor of its citizens.
And when, through a progressive income tax, it assigns higher levels of
taxation to some citizens, while relieving others of any obligation, it creates
a corrupt and illegal system in which those without obligation can visit it
upon their fellow citizens at no risk to their own treasure.
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 compromise their freedoms while they are
being bribed with the latest in a series of government programs. This, indeed,
is the nefarious means by which the political class clings to power. They
intend that we will become so selfishly dependent upon their favors that we
will be led to abandon the good of the whole and of future generations. But
when a series of abuses and usurpations of lawful authority collectively propel
us to an increasingly bloated and oppressive government, it becomes the right
and duty of the people to rise up and reclaim its lawful heritage of liberty.
The recent history of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress has
manifested itself in an historic and unparalleled grasp of power, transferring
to Washington those powers once held by the states or the people; and
unlawfully asserting control over significant segments of the private sector.
Liberalism, once a political concept signifying freedom from government, has
been transformed into a system of government control over broad expanses of
both personal and public actions.
To prove this, let Facts be submitted to
a candid world.
Barack Obama
has gone out of his way to apologize on our behalf for the United States before
world bodies and assemblies, while failing to acknowledge the supreme gifts of
freedom and free market capitalism that the United States has brought to
countries around the world, at great sacrifice in our blood and treasure.
He has compromised American security by releasing internal
government memos at the behest of the radical American Civil Liberties Union
and undermining the effectiveness and morale of the Central Intelligence
Agency.
He has presided over the largest increase in our national
debt in our country’s history and over unprecedented levels of pork barrel
spending, much of it illegally dispensed to those politically connected to his
or his party’s political campaign or advancing overt political goals in accord
with those of his administration.
He has unlawfully taken over American financial institutions
and automobile companies and turned over the latter to the United Auto Workers
responsible for their demise.
He has violated the rights of secured creditor bondholders
in favor of the unsecured creditor United Autoworkers Union, as a form of
payback for political support, and then demagogically condemned the bondholders
as “speculators.”
He has held the United States Constitution in contempt
while, at the same time, shamelessly using the hallowed repositories of our
Constitutional documents as window dressing for his public utterances.
He has callously failed to protect the lives of the unborn,
while providing tax dollars to organizations whose primary goal is the wanton
destruction of human life, even to the point of partial-birth abortion.
He has proposed to socialize the entire American health care
system by stealth, first by offering a public option and, then, by forcing
private health insurance out of business. He hopes to accomplish this
unprecedented power grab in haste while excluding members of the opposition
from its closed-door deliberations and using a supine mainstream media.
He pursues his legislative agenda in full knowledge that it
must be accomplished with borrowed money, and despite our existing $99 trillion
unfunded liability for Social Security and Medicare.
He threatens to increase our National Debt by more than $10
trillion in ten years and our annual debt service to nearly $800 billion, most
of which will become the responsibility of future generations.
In thrall to radical environmentalists, he mindlessly
advances the scientifically unfounded case for global warming alarmism, and
proposes implementing unprecedented and unnecessary controls over the American
economy, while failing to address our genuine energy needs.
In an unjustified rush to unproven and inadequate
alternative energy sources, he promises to do untold damage to the American
economic system, while driving up the cost of fossil fuels.
He promotes an economically masochistic “cap and trade”
program to control carbon dioxide emissions when there is no proven evidence
that carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming. The complex regulatory
regime he proposes will cripple the American economy whose health we depend on
to confront our already massive levels of debt.
He refuses to permit the development of clean and safe
nuclear power or permit drilling for oil in Alaska and offshore.
He has vindictively dismissed Gerald Walpin,
an honorable and highly respected Inspector General of AmeriCorps,
from his position for investigating abuses committed by friends of his
administration. Moreover, he has shamefully impugned Mr. Walpin’s
competence and sanity as a justification for the firing.
Considering himself above criticism for his egregious acts,
he has gone out of his way to personally attack individuals and media outlets
critical of his administration.
He has forced states to accept stimulus funds and federal
controls despite their resistance to these encroachments upon their
prerogatives.
In collusion with thuggish organized labor unions, he and a
supine Congress propose to deny workers the fundamental right to decide by
secret ballot whether they desire union representation. Toward that end, he and
his party stand to benefit richly from the improper use of union dues for
partisan political purposes against the wishes of the rank-and-file.
In slavish support for the political interests of the
teachers’ unions, he denies minority children in the District of Columbia, and
elsewhere, the opportunity to attend schools of their choice with vouchers,
heartlessly consigning them to the grossly inadequate public schools to which
he would dare not send his own children.
This man-child who now governs us knows little more than
what his advisors tell him, his arrogant ignorance being informed more by the
neo-marxist tenets impressed upon him as a youth than
by the Constitutional principles of liberty deeply held by the citizens of the
country he presumes to rule.
He has gone out its way to appoint to positions of authority
numerous extremists and law-breakers whose views or actions are hostile to our
traditions of freedom, free market capitalism, political sovereignty, private
property, and honesty. To wit:
Carol Browner, czarina
of global warming, a former member of the Socialist International and opponent
of our free market system.
Former Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju
Koh, as Legal Adviser for the State Department. Koh, a radical proponent of world
government, in collusion with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, would submit
U.S. law to the dictates of the United Nations and other international bodies.
Henry Knox, to the Advisory Council on Faith-Based and
Neighborhood Partnerships. A militant homosexual
activist, he has called Pope Benedict XVI and certain Catholic bishops
"discredited leaders" for opposing same-sex marriage.
Timothy Geithner, noted tax cheat, as Secretary of the Treasury.
Kathleen Sebelius, radical
abortion proponent, as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.
Hillary Clinton, as
Secretary of State, a woman who should be in jail for a variety of offenses,
including withholding of evidence, tax fraud, influence peddling, securities
fraud, illegal campaign contributions, and theft of White House property.
Dr. Steven Chu, radical
proponent of unfounded global warming views, as Secretary of Energy.
Sonia Sotomayor, nominated to the United States Supreme Court,
despite repeatedly expressing decidedly racist views regarding the superiority
of a Latina woman’s judgment.
These abuses have been mirrored by an
out-of-control Congress in which a legislative program of government control
over major segments of American life is advanced without regard for the rights
and freedoms of the American people and with a haste and haughtiness unbecoming
of a democratic deliberative body.
That same Congress has demonstrated an
unwillingness to address abuses of power and corruption within its own ranks,
from a mendacious Speaker of the House who deliberately denies being briefed on
“enhanced interrogation techniques” applied to international terrorists, to a
corrupt congressman from Pennsylvania who secured millions in contracts for a
contractor who financed his re-election campaigns, to a corrupt Connecticut
Senator who has received millions in campaign contributions from the financial
institutions over which his committee has oversight, and preferential mortgage
terms from one of them.
Following on the heels of the previous
administration, and using borrowed money, this administration has illegally and
wastefully provided trillions of dollars in TARP funds to a variety of
financial institutions and insurance companies which should have been allowed
to go out of business.
They have colluded with Republicans in
enacting the massively wasteful $300 billion farm bill containing, among other
things, massive and ill-advised subsidies for corn-based ethanol which have
driven up food prices across the globe.
And while the abuses of the present administration
dwarf those of any previous administration, we must not lose sight of the
degree to which politicians of both parties stray from the principles of
limited government, fiscal discipline, moral and political integrity, and
respect for the principles of liberty which guided our founding fathers and all
TRUE PATRIOTS today. When they place personal and partisan advantage above
principle, they do a grave disservice to this country. When they grossly spend
beyond our means, they shamefully place future generations in thrall to the
debt they have amassed.
At every stage of these abuses of power,
the President and his party have aroused the opposition of millions of Tea
Party Patriots and their supporters across this great country, whose
legitimate, sincere and respectful petitions have been both demeaned and
derided by the President and his sycophants in the government-owned media, and
elsewhere.
Therefore, we, the Tea Party Patriots of
America do call upon our fellow citizens—Democrats, Republicans,
Independents--to rise up in righteous indignation at these blatant usurpations
of the rights and privileges afforded us by the Constitution of the United
States and the long-standing traditions of a free people.
We will take our protests to the streets,
to the media, to the churches and synagogues, to the schools, the places of
public assembly, but, most of all, to the ballot box where these usurpers can
be voted out of office and our Constitutional Republic restored to the rightful
place our founders intended.
Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the
world for the rectitude of our cause (not to the ACLU), the Constitution as it
was bequeathed to us in 1787 (not the so-called “Living Constitution”), and by
the Authority of the good People of these fifty states (not the elite in
Washington, DC), we do solemnly publish and declare our intentions to
effectuate a peaceful restoration of our Constitutional Republic of limited
government, freedom and liberty for all, private property rights, free market
capitalism, and common sense.
And in support of this modern
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.
© Copyright 2009 Kendall Svengalis, North
Stonington, Connecticut