From an email blast from [email protected]:
On this day in 1776, fifty-six men signed a Declaration of Independence from the tyrannical British Monarchy, and risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, and placed their families in peril so that we could enjoy the liberties we continue to fight to protect and secure today. Subsequent to our declaration, 25,000 American patriots died while fighting the British in the American War of Independence . . .
50 years later on this very date, in 1826, two of the authors of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, died only hours apart.
Of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, all were men of means and well educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty could be death if they were captured. Five were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the fifty-six fought and died from wounds or hardships resulting from the Revolutionary War. Many died penniless, broken men.
Remember what they sacrificed, and be grateful…we can only hope our elected officials take pause and remember why they are where they are, and the oath they swore….most, could never hold a candle to those 56 men, nor the patriots who died for our freedom.
The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When 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 refused 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 harrass 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 benefits 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 Brittish 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.
The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:
Column 1 Georgia: Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton
Column 2 North Carolina: William Hooper Joseph Hewes John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton
Column 3 Massachusetts: John Hancock 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
Column 4 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
Column 5 New York: William Floyd Philip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis Morris New Jersey: Richard Stockton John Witherspoon Francis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark
Column 6 New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett William Whipple Massachusetts: 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 Hampshire: Matthew Thornton
It’s disappointing that people don’t check the facts. This claim has been in the media echo chamber for years and has just enough truth to be believable.
“Evidently Adams was right: So great is our need for simplified, dramatic events and heroes that even the real-life biographies of the fifty-six men who risked their lives to publicly declare American independence are no longer compelling enough. Through multiple versions of pieces like the one quoted above, their lives have been repeatedly embellished with layers of fanciful fiction to make for a better story. As we often do, we’ll try here to strip away those accumulated layers of fiction and get down to whatever kernel of truth may lie underneath:
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died.
It is true that five signers of the Declaration of Independence were captured by the British during the course of the Revolutionary War. However, none of them died while a prisoner, and four of them were taken into custody not because they were considered “traitors” due to their status as signatories to that document, but because they were captured as prisoners of war while actively engaged in military operations against the
British.
George Walton was captured after being wounded while commanding militia at the Battle of Savannah in December 1778, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., Arthur Middleton, and Edward Rutledge (three of the four Declaration of Independence signers from South Carolina) were taken prisoner at the Siege of Charleston in May in 1780. Although they endured the ill treatment typically afforded to prisoners of war during their captivity (prison conditions were quite deplorable at the time), they were not tortured, nor is there evidence that they were treated more harshly than other wartime prisoners who were not also signatories to the Declaration. Moreover, all four men were eventually exchanged or released; had they been considered traitors by the British, they would have been hanged.
Richard Stockton of New Jersey was the only signer taken prisoner specifically because of his status as a signatory to the Declaration, “dragged from his bed by night” by local Tories after he had evacuated his family from New Jersey, and imprisoned in New York City’s infamous Provost Jail like a common criminal.
Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
It is true that a number of signers saw their homes and property occupied, ransacked, looted, and vandalized by the British (and even in some cases by the Americans). However, as we discuss in more detail below, this activity was a common part of warfare. Signers’ homes were not specifically targeted for destruction — like many other Americans, their property was subject to seizure when it fell along the path of a war being waged on the North American continent.
Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons captured.
Abraham Clark of New Jersey saw two of his sons captured by the British and incarcerated on the prison ship Jersey. John Witherspoon, also of New Jersey, saw his eldest son, James, killed in the Battle of Germantown in October 1777. If there was a second signer of the Declaration whose son was killed while serving in the Continental Army, we have yet to identify him.
Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.
This statement is quite misleading as phrased. Nine signers died during the course of the Revolutionary War, but none of them died from wounds or hardships inflicted on them by the British. (Indeed, several of the nine didn’t even take part in the war.) Only one signer, Button Gwinnett of Georgia, died from wounds, and those were received not at the hands of the British, but from a fellow officer with whom he duelled in May 1777.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Before the American Revolution, Carter Braxton was possessed of a considerable fortune through inheritance and favorable marriages. While still in his teens he inherited the family estate, which included a flourishing Virginia tobacco plantation, upon the death of his father. He married a wealthy heiress who died when he was just 21, and within a few years he had remarried, this time to the daughter of the Receiver of Customs in Virginia for the King. As a delegate representing Virginia in the Continental Congress in 1776, he was one of the minority of delegates reluctant to support an American declaration of independence, a move which he viewed at the time as too dangerous:
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp#iuEreX5EL2QvlowT.99
Ah yes; the compulsion to deconstruct the myths upon which our culture was based.
But there is one myth that is simple truth and fact. That brave men and women did in fact risk and give their fortunes, their sacred honor and their lives to give us the first and still the freest society on this planet.
And that if we go down the path that the liberal/progressives/statists fight so fiercely to enact; we will once again fall into a world of tyranny and the last best hope for freedom for the world will once again turn into the darkness of servitude and outright slavery.
Would rather have the view from the Left?
Democrats usually quote Stephen Douglas who said, the Declaration was nothing more than a justification for the colonists to withdraw their allegiance to the British, and that by this reading “the Declaration is of no practical use now—mere rubbish—old wadding left to rot on the battle-field after the victory is won
Remember TR, Icabod read it on the interwebs so it must be true. Apparently, our founding fathers didn’t suffer enough for some people.
Ah the equitable “truth” from Snopes. Perhaps you can find some Wikipedia info for us.
Perhaps you can show the one person interested in the truth where he’s wrong…
Brave men all.
Who would they be today?
How far down the list towards the end do you suppose Bama baby would be?
I think he is who the letter would be written to…. dear TYRANT with pen…..
Sadly, none come to mind. At all.
All seem to have one eye on the popularity polls and the other on their bank account.
Marcus Luttrel might be in there somewhere; Ron Paul, maybe; how ’bout Edward Mechenbier?
It’s the times; were we in the same position, such people would emerge.
Under similar conditions, people such as Mandela, Chavez and others arise.
At this time in the U.S, we’re again in the sufferable evils stage.
The Independence Journey
Tomorrow I travel
Across this great land
And try to unravel
How all this began
I look to the mountains
And gaze at the sea
Are these where the fountains
Of freedom might be?
The fields full of crops
The deep sylvan glade
The bustling shops
Where the future is made
The skyscrapers soaring
The bridges, the ships
The Space Shuttles roaring
On million-mile trips
But harvest, invention,
Our tools and our crafts
Are not the intention
Contained in those drafts…
“United States” seems
Like a common phrase now
But once it was dreams
Born from deep thinking brow
As the Founders grew weary
Of rough distant rule
And taxes and tariffs
Provided the fuel…
Independence declared!
Hear the bell as it rings!
That proud history shared
Isn’t based on mere “things”
The new nation caught
And flamed bright in their hearts
And though doubters still thought
That such disparate parts
Could never be coached
Or formed into one
Still ideas, once they’re broached
Sometimes see the job done
Through blood and through sweat
And through fear, war and strife
They struggled, and yet
Freedom loved, more than life
So they crafted a code
That gave people a voice
That gave promise to all
And the world, a new choice
By the people’s consent
A Republic was born
And with blood sorely spent
Broke the shackles we’d worn
Then we prospered and grew
In this fair rugged land
And to build straight and true
All the folks lent a hand
The foundation they laid
Is a strong, steady place
And the price that they paid
Gave us strength, hope, and grace
And still our Constitution
Guides the Land of the Free
And provides the solution
That made all of this be
And at last I can see
How our strength came about
Founders fought to be free
With hearts noble and stout
And they carried the day
And they brought it to us!
And we now, in our way
Undertake this great trust
For Americans make
Our America great
So I’ll pause and I’ll take
One more moment to state:
My dear friends reading here
Don’t forget where you are
We’ll defeat hate and fear
And we yet will go far
We each have work to do
(Not just do, but know why)
Now, to each one of you
Happy Fourth of July!
===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle (written in 2009, when we still had Shuttles)
We still have Shuttles, they’re bolted to concrete pylons and on display now.
They HAD to retire them, too much complexity.
I almost hate to say it, but the idea of a fully re-usable like the Musk’s Falcon 9 is cooler than the Shuttle.
youtube.com/watch?v=OX2-qEC7P_I
Gotta love his choice of theme music.
“too much complexity.”
Because, you know, carrying huge payloads and 7 astronauts (more crew than any other space vehicle in history) to orbit, keeping them alive for up to 2 weeks, deploying satellites, capturing orbiting satellites for repairs, and even returning satellites to earth, as well as surviving reentry, and having all the same control surfaces as a modern aircraft so you can return to a number of different landing sites and land on a standard runway….. these are all simple things that could be done by a simple machine. Like a Glock 21.
I’m not trying to argue the Shuttle doesn’t need a more advanced replacement. I just want it pointed out, of course it was complicated it had a complicated mission. And it did a damn good job for many years. But this is all besides the real point.
The tragedy wasn’t that the vehicles got sent to museums.
The Tragedy is that there are no plans to replace it. The Shuttles weren’t retired. The Shuttle Program was retired.
Read “Riding Rockets” by Mike Mullane. He crewed a few STS missions.
We nearly lost a few more than the 2 we did. STS was great 1970’s tech, I don’t deny that. Musk’s SpaceX is nearly ready for man-rating. The tech they are now doing is way beyond Boeing’s Orion, and likely far below their cost.
It scares me that we don’t launch shuttles, or really spacecraft in general anymore. The International Space Station that wouldn’t have existed but for America is now serviced entirely by Russian Soyuz rockets. That’s right American Astronauts fly over to Russia to get on their rockets to get to the Space Station we convinced the rest of the world to help build. It’s Terrifying.
Because:
When you live in a world where even America, the greatest nation in the world, doesn’t have the Hope or the Vision to be committed to space exploration anymore… Then what hope is left? I was going to write about the psychological damage to Americans, that if our government doesn’t have hope how can we as citizens. But this original article made me realize something.
The Power of America is not in dollars or gold or armies or jets or any of the things economists try to use to measure American influence this week for their market forecast reports. America is the standard of hope for the whole world. The shining example to everyone else in every other country that no matter what strife of famine or hardship strikes anywhere, somewhere in this world there is still a nation, made by its people not gangsters or thugs, that there is still a people who strive to seek, to find, and do not yield. That somewhere in the world there are still people that dream of greater things.
The day we stopped launching shuttles we basically told the world, “Nope, even we don’t dream or believe in greater things anymore.”
“We are worried about our bills, so we are just gonna stay home and eat ramen, you guys tried that stuff yet? They got some cool stuff over in that Asia.”
The day we stopped launching shuttles the sun shone in the sky just a little less brightly, and the whole world seemed just a little more mundane. Because we gave up. We gave up something that no one else in the whole world would be stupid, or hopeful, or crazy, or daring enough to try. And that took something away, from the whole world. That’s the Power of America. Hope. And that when we hope the whole world hopes with us. And when we give up the whole world gives up too.
I hear people discuss the American Dream all the time. Is it this? Is it that? Is it a wife, 2 kids, and a 2 car garage? Is it alive or is it dead? As far as I have traveled in the world I think I can say this for certain: The American Dream is that in America you can have your dreams. And that is like no where else in the world. When we stop dreaming for ourselves the world sees that, and thinks they cannot dream too. When we stop believing the whole world does too.
The Shuttle Program was a crazy, daring, hopeful, dream, that only America could have. And that we did made the whole world a little better place.
Actually, the day we stopped launching shuttles we basically told the world, “These pieces of crap are ridiculously costly, dangerous, and well past their useful lifetime. Additionally, they were a pretty poor design from day one, a clumsy mess designed by a government committee.”
The failure was not in closing the Shuttle program. The failure was to not have a much better replacement ready to fly twenty years ago. Better still, rather than relying on shamefully outdated government-financed technology, we should have opened space exploration to private enterprise decades ago. That’s the truly American way to explore and settle a frontier.
Amen! The Russians, you will recall, copied the shuttle from stolen plans and a monogram model. Theirs flew once and was immediately retired. We flew a fleet for more than a decade. But they were eventually worn out.
“The failure was to not have a much better replacement ready to fly twenty years ago.”
This is a major part of my point.
Instead of giving up, the program should have been funded to produce new vehicles. Why are we in argument?
“It scares me that we don’t launch shuttles, or really spacecraft in general anymore. The International Space Station that wouldn’t have existed but for America is now serviced entirely by Russian Soyuz rockets”
Wrong. SpaceX has been supplying the ISS for quite some time, now. You don’t hear about it, because it’s old news. SpaceX’s Dragon will be man-rated soon, it has been flown re-supply missions to ISS several times now.
United Launch Alliance (Boeing and Lockheed Martin) has been doing heavy lift stuff (Department of Defense) since 2006 or so.
The US government supplied the initial space technology, it’s now time for private industry to take over.
Because we all know how well Uncle Sam runs expensive programs.
I see, i used the wrong word. I meant to convey that the only way American Astronauts get to the ISS, which wouldn’t exist without us, is to go to Russia and use their rockets. I think that’s a travesty.
Yes, Russia is the current “people taxi”, in a year or so, we will rectify that.
An interesting Russian observation – last month’s Falcon 9 flight demonstrated landing the first stage on the ocean intact, however the seas was too rough for them to plant it on the recovery ship. After stage separation they oriented the first stage horizontal, at a few km altitude, pointed it vertical, re-lit an engine and soft-landed it.
The Russians just coincidentally had one of their “fishing trawlers” near the recovery zone.
With SpaceX, the US is the undisputed leader in spaceflight technology.
And they built them ’em in (Apple reference) California, USA.
What an amazing document.
What amazes me even more is how many people apparently do not “… hold these truths to be self-evident …”.
On that note I am going to get some equipment ready and go make some noise! Perhaps that will help some of the neighbors to grasp some self-evident truths.
Happy Fourth of July everyone!!!!
And a Happy Independence Day to you and yours.
I shall expend the most rare and precious thing in this country.
I’m gonna shoot 500 rounds of .22 lr today!
That’s perhaps the best way to celebrate, and we did the same last year. Have fun! I’m out of state on vacation so it’s too complicated for me to shoot today.
so maybe we should petition whitehouse.gov to ban Shannon or at least strip her of her 2A rights, including the bald-headed armed guards Bloomy provides her? Hmmm…… me sensing an idea
Yep, off to exercise my 2A rights on this beautiful 4th. Happy Independence Day everyone!
I never thought about how the “united” is left uncapitalized in the Declaration. Clearly, the original intent was for a collection of States with mutual goals; not for one government to rule them all.
The laws these anti-gunners are pushing for may (read: don’t) work for their neck of the woods… but I can’t assure you, they aren’t going to work in mine.
But it was capitalized the second time!
Geez Icabod what a debbie downer. Thought you were going to say that the signers were mostly evil white slave owners of the planter class…or maybe they were technically traitors. It took giant b#lls to defy the British 238 years ago. Something sadly lacking in today’s world.
And definitely missing from today’s leaders.
Gunr
Would have refused to sign & voted present. Then notified the British for a admiralty posistion.
Now my son & I are going to go exercise a few of our rights. With .22lr, .45acp, .308 & .44mag in preparation for filling the freezer on his first real hunting trip.
Remember it’s Happy Independence Day! Every place else has a 4th of July.
The only way to maintain our independence & freedom seems to be watering a certain tree mentioned by Jefferson
I would’ve signed and fought. Hopefully we can minimize government before we face the same risks today.
Notes for Reading the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July
http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/04/notes-for-reading-the-declaration-of-independence-on-the-fourth-of-july/
That’s very much like the complaint Jefferson and the Founders had with King George. In the spirit of the Declaration, the Cruz report lists some things the federal government would be able to do had the White House’s lawyers won these cases:
•Unilaterally install officers and bypass the Senate confirmation process (NLRB v. Noel Canning);
•Search the contents of cell phones without a warrant (Riley v. California);
•Use international treaties to displace state sovereignty over criminal law (Bond v. United States);
•Expand federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws (Burrage v. United States);
•Apply arbitrary immigration rules (Judulang v. Holder)…
And the list goes on. Given the Obama administration’s spectacular losses in court, one could be forgiven for thinking that the president doesn’t think much of “altering laws and fundamentally abolishing our forms of government.” After all, that’s been the progressive project for more than a century. Woodrow Wilson—the Founding Father of American progressivism, if you will—was vexed above all by the Constitution’s separation of powers. For him, the maxims of the Founders were an impediment to good governance and to truly democratic politics: “The old political formulas do not fit the present problems; they read now like documents taken out of a forgotten age.”
Sort of like Animal Farm. Our government becomes more of a tyrant of which the founding fathers rebelled against everyday.
He’s on record as believing the Constitution is flawed in not providing for collectivist wealth redistribution. That a man with such views has come to the White House!
First time I read that, being non-American and all. Good read. But considering that this document is a cornerstone of American patriotism and your identity in general, I find it downright f*cktarded that you have such anti-gun/gun grabber individuals in your country.
Without this document, you wouldn’t be America.
Without guns, you wouldn’t have this document.
And at the rate that things are going, per this declaration, you’ll be at a real breaking point in about 3 years.
Prepare for revolution: 2017.
Oh, and Happy Independence Day, America. Celebrate now, as you may not be able to in 5 years.
Without this document, you wouldn’t be America.
Without guns, you wouldn’t have this document.
You are closer to the truth than you will ever know as the Revolutionary War really started taking off with the British Gun Control and Gun Grab at Lexington and Concord. Now the various domestic governments perform the gun control and gun grabs..
Keep in mind, the French lionized the United States, and modeled their revolution on ours. Look what they wound up with.
We had Washington. They had Robespierre.
The French also had Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.
And we had men like Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton, and the French had Rousseau, Montesquieu and Voltaire.
While Robespierre certainly had much to do with the outcome of the ideas, the ideas of French “liberty” were different from the American ideas on the subject from the ground up. The American Revolution succeeded because it was a convergence of men, culture/ideas, place and time. It is a unique and rare thing that happened, and hasn’t been duplicated since, and probably will never be.
We also had a social concensus buying in to a Judeo-Christian world view. France had the Enlightenment.
Independence = freedom and liberty. These are things totalitarians fear and hate. With this in mind we don’t need a scorecard to know who is who.
A friend, now passed on, once told me a war story. He was a 20 year old private when the Battle of The Bulge began in December 1944. His regiment routed by the German advance, he was lost on the Schnee Eifel with his Sargent and a couple of other guys. It was dusk and snowing heavily when their jeep edged into a forest clearing. Through the snowfall they spotted the vague outline of a tank—a MkIV with a long-barreled 75mm. The tank must’ve seen them at the same time because my friend described watching with a mixture of shock and sheer terror as turret slowly turned to point directly at them. It fired, the HE shell just missing them and exploding further into the forest. Before it could fire again they backed into the forest and disappeared.
I’ve often wondered about that moment. It would’ve been hard for an experienced gunner to miss at virtually point-blank range. I like to think the German tanker intentionally missed.
The Battle of The Bulge was largely an American fight. And like so many others in our history, it was won largely as a result of American soldiers’ and local commanders’ taking individual initiative. At places like St. Vith and Bastonge, American’s dug in and fought back. There aren’t many of the old warriors left. Whenever I meet one, I always tell them thanks. They saved us.
Not all Germans are Nazis and some did have sympathetic feelings towards the US throughout history. Depending on what data you want to believe, Germans are the largest ethnic European group in the USA. Germans are not quite as infatuated with Volk, Fuhrer, und Vaterland as many people imagine. I had one German ancestor who was a Hanoverian mercenary in the Revolutionary War and defected to George Washington’s Army. Many German Mercenaries did likewise. Sachsen Germans really did not like the Prussian Government of the 19th century. I had one German ancestor come to the USA from Dresden who was a Sachsen soldat, and did not agree with the rampant militarism and lack of civil rights with the Prussians. I noticed that many Germans came to the Mid West USA prior and after WWII
Likewise. It’s not certain, but the conjecture is my ancestor was a Hessian who deserted or was captured and stayed at war’s end.
Um, independence [of one nation from another] does not necessarily mean freedom of liberty [for the citizens of either nation].
For those interested, log onto the website: “now the end begins” and have a look at what instructions your “Presented” has issued to American troops still in Iraq. Loosely quoted; during this “holy” month of ramadan, all American troops are to strictly abide by rules of ramadan; no eating, drinking, smoking or sex while off base. Any American troops not complying are to be arrested by the “authorities” and dealt with according to the law. Also have a look at what this man has to say about Islam; arguably the most maliciously militant group of fundamentalist bigots in the world today, who have only one objective, according to the decrees in their koran; global islamification at whatever cost. And this dork is in your Whitehouse??!! Being South African, I have always admired America for her firm belief in principles, but now I’m afraid you guys appear to be on a slippery slope whence there is going to be no return unless you take some drastic action. Alles van die beste!
Lets stop and reflect upon the sacrifices that have sustained the Nation to this point.
Tomorrow is time enough to continue the fight
“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.” That would be the ONLY duty mentioned in the Declaration.
And one month later –
“If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
– Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776
My Independence Day celebration involved a .45acp 1911, a target, and 50 rounds of ammo. A much more appropriate celebration than fireworks.
Really enjoy these threads on the history of America, does anyone know where I can find the picture that the above painting came from? lol.
God bless our country, Bill of Rights, Consitiution, our liberties, and etc. With the shit head in office let’s hope they can still exist into the next election.
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