Posted by Esarhaddon from accel12.lax.untd.com (64.136.26.22) on Friday, July 04, 2003 at 9:39PM :
In Reply to: DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FOR 2003 posted by Esarhaddon from accel12.lax.untd.com (64.136.26.22) on Friday, July 04, 2003 at 9:27PM :
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
hen 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 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. 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 refuted 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 invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations 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 benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring 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 burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & 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 insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured 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 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 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 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, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
--John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Content for these pages provided by Thomas Kindig.
Start page | The Document | Signers | Related Information | Jefferson's Account | Graff House | Links | Guestbook
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Copyright ©1999-2003 by the Independence Hall Association, a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1942. Publishing electronically as ushistory.org. On the Internet since July 4, 1995.
............................................
: A BUZZFLASH DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FOR 2003
: July 4, 2003
: An Independence Day Declaration
: Of the People of
: The United States of America
:
: When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to reform the political bands which have governed them at home and 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 that reformation.
: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all human beings 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 People, 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 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 or 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 States; And such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former System of Government. The history of the present President of the United States, George W. Bush, 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 the Facts be submitted to a candid world.
: He has spent the country's surplus and bankrupted the treasury, creating the biggest annual deficit in history, to be followed by still larger deficits and spiraling national debt that will plague or country for generations to come.
: He has presided in the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression, losing nearly 3 million jobs, causing the largest stock market downturn in history, cutting unemployment benefits for more Americans than any other President in United States history, and the near bankruptcy of nearly every State in the Union, while repeatedly cutting taxes for the wealthiest citizens and corporations in the country.
: He has dissolved more international treaties in areas from environmental protection, to human rights, to arms control than any President in United States history, causing untold and unforeseeable harm to not only the people of the United States, but to the people of the world as well.
: He has presided over one of the largest security and intelligence failures in the history of the United States, resulting in a most horrific terrorist attack against our soil, then squandered the world wide sympathy directed toward our country on a campaign of empirical aggression for the economic benefit of global corporate interests.
: He has attacked and taken over two sovereign countries, one unilaterally against the will of the United Nations and the world community, thus drastically changing long standing foreign policies, and creating world-wide distrust and disdain for the United States, and has provided no effective plan to rebuild either of those countries.
: He has removed or diminished more civil liberties for Americans, and signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution, than any other President in United States history, subjecting citizens and non-citizens to unlawful searches, seizures, detentions, and unrepresented/under-represented court trials with no benefit of jury.
: He has repeatedly designed and promoted to law policies that invariably benefit the short-term interests of the privileged wealthy and large corporations over the interests of the vast majority of the American People in the areas of health care, disability and retirement benefits, environmental and consumer protection, and education, to name only a few.
: He has repeatedly distorted facts or presented outright lies and fabrications in order to persuade both the Congress and the American People to support his personal and financial agendas, resulting in the needless deaths and/or financial ruin of thousands of people both in this country and around the world.
: He has undermined the concept of a free and independent press by allowing increased consolidation of ownership by fewer and larger corporate owners, despite enormous public outcry against such changes.
: In every stage of these Oppressions, We have petitioned, protested, emailed, telephoned, written letters and otherwise humbly asked for Redress: Our repeated requests have been answered only by repeated and increased injury. A Head of State, whose character is this 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 elected brethren in Congress. We have warned them from time to time of the attempts by the President to extend unwarranted jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our forefathers 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 established form of self-governance. They, too, have for the most part been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our re-formation, and hold them, as we hold the current President and his Administration, Enemies of Freedom.
: We, therefore, the People of the United States of America, over the Internet, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, by our own authority as the Governed, solemnly publish an declare, that the Government of these United States be returned to its rightful place under the jurisdiction of the Governed, that the Government return to its appropriate place as protector of the People and the Environment against the special interests of the Corporations with renewed fiscal responsibility for future generations, that the Government return our country to it's position as protector of liberty and freedom both domestically and abroad not through aggression, but through diplomacy, renewed alliances and leadership, that the Government return to the Constitutional principles that are the foundation of over two centuries of successful self-government of these United States of America. 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, this day, July 4th of the Year 2003, by BuzzFlash readers,
: Kenneth G. Follett, Rockford, IL
: Brent P. Cabrera, Rockford, IL
: Copyright of BuzzFlash.Com (Please Acknowledge in Any Reproduction or Use)
: A BUZZFLASH DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FOR 2003
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