For those of you that frequent my rantings from someplace other than the U.S. I ask that you indulge us Yanks for today. It's July 4th, a day when we Americans mime our favorite past time of blowin shit up! We do this in celebration of an event that occurred over 200 years ago.
On July 4th 1776 a group of folks got together and decided that enough was enough. (It was the Colonial equivalent of a teenager screaming at his parents that he was moving out of the house). They wrote a letter to the King of England announcing that they and their neighbors weren't going to take it anymore! That they were willing to fight for the right to make their own decisions. They declared for themselves, and for all of us that followed, our independence. Bold!
Most Americans have never actually read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety (shame on you). That gets remedied today! Here's how the document begins (it's pretty powerful stuff) and if you'd like to read the whole thing just click here!
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 to 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 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...
On July 4th 1776 a group of folks got together and decided that enough was enough. (It was the Colonial equivalent of a teenager screaming at his parents that he was moving out of the house). They wrote a letter to the King of England announcing that they and their neighbors weren't going to take it anymore! That they were willing to fight for the right to make their own decisions. They declared for themselves, and for all of us that followed, our independence. Bold!
Most Americans have never actually read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety (shame on you). That gets remedied today! Here's how the document begins (it's pretty powerful stuff) and if you'd like to read the whole thing just click here!
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 to 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 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...
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