REAL News for REAL People
America, The Land That I Love
A Bill of Rights was finally added when the first US Congress convened, thanks to James Madison, who kept his promise to Virginia and introduced a series of amendments (proposed in large part by the individual states themselves) on June 8, 1789 and to Thomas Jefferson for emphasizing to his good friend that "A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference." The Bill of Rights was hugely popular and overwhelmingly supported, and it officially became part of the US Constitution in December 1789.
The Declaration was "submitted to a candid world" in July 1776 as the American Revolution was just getting started. The American colonies/states fought successfully and against all odds when British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington (who had help from French General Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, and French Army troops) at Yorktown (VA) on October 19, 1781. The treaty of Paris, signed by American delegates Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and a representative of the King of Great Britain, King George III, on September 3, 1783, acknowledged the independence and sovereignty of all the American states.
Article I reads: "His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, New-Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode-Island & Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina & Georgia, to be free sovereign & Independent States; that he Treats with them as such, and for himself his Heirs & Successors relinquishes all Claims to the Government Propriety and Territorial Rights of the same & every Part thereof."
With respect to the Declaration of Independence, America was, and continues to be, founded on its "revolutionary" principles. She appeals to a higher standard than other countries. In America, we believe that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. All nations, all people, look to our country as a beacon of light and right. It's this principle, along with our commitment to individual Liberty that makes America a truly unique and legitimate nation.
I love America for her commitment to the Declaration and because it defines us as Americans. I know it defines me. I sing its praises whenever I speak to my Tea Party group and I sing its praises, and reference it, whenever possible when I write.
The Declaration is masterful and revolutionary because it explains the concept of Individual Sovereignty, which is the concept upon which our nation and our government system was based, and explains the proper purposes of government. Individual Sovereignty is the government philosophy that asserts that true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments. Since government belongs inherently to the people, it must act in their best interests. And since government belongs to the people, whenever they believe it to be destructive of its purposes (as the Declaration explains), they have the right to "throw off" that government and resume all sovereign power over themselves until a new government is established. If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses (which they do by calling for an Article V Convention or pressuring their States to interpose and nullify abusive and unconstitutional federal laws and actions or in the last resort, to revolt or to secede), outside interference is justified. By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states' borders to protect the rights of citizens. Perhaps that is why it is important to maintain friendly relations with like-minded nations.
Related to the concept of "individual sovereignty" is the understanding that a person has the right of conscience - the right to think and believe as he or she chooses. A person has a functioning mind and the actual or potential ability to make choices based on reason and awareness, in accordance with his or her belief set, which may or may not be justified by religious teachings. Young children have such minds and are therefore also sovereign, but the ability to use reason is something that develops as the child's brain matures, and therefore the parents have a responsibility to exercise some of the sovereignty rights on behalf of their children. This "parental obligation" creates a moral obligation on the part of parents to provide wisdom and judgement, as well as education oversight and material needs for their children. Upon the age of maturity, the child becomes a fully sovereign human being and is emancipated from his or her parents. Individual sovereignty also explains why we as Americans have the rights to life, to speak freely, to exercise our religious beliefs, to assemble, to protest, to keep and bear firearms for self-protection, and to be safe and secure in our homes and to have our privacy respected. These are inalienable rights, which means they attach to us by way of our very humanity.
Also related to the concept of individual sovereignty is the notion that Americans have the right to the fruits of their own labor and should be minimally taxed. The fundamental right to acquire, possess, and sell property is the reason Jefferson included the term "and the pursuit of happiness" as one of the inalienable rights included in the Declaration of Independence. The fundamental right to acquire, possess, and sell property is the backbone of opportunity; it incentivizes us and gives us a valid reason to get a good education, to decide on a good and prosperous career, to save our money, to invest, to seize opportunities, and to invest in starting a business. It's the most practical means to protect one's assets and the most practical means to pursue happiness. This right, along with the free enterprise system (articulated by Adam Smith in "Wealth of Nations") that stems from it, is the source of individual prosperity, national prosperity, and the foundation of economic liberty.
In short, our country was founded on the revolutionary notion of Individual Liberty. I love that about America. I am free. Every day I can exercise my freedoms without government oppression or suppression (as long as I am not around members or organizations on the extreme left, although I'm confident I can hold my own).
"Liberty" is defined as the state of being free to exercise one's inalienable and civil rights and to be free from unreasonable government control. Liberty means a person can freely exist within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority (government) on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.
I doubt that those rounded up after the January 6 so-called "insurrection" believe this is a free country. I doubt Donald Trump believes this is a free country after what the Democrats in Congress did to him while he was duly elected to serve as president. I doubt that all those (politically targeted) who have been needlessly and unfairly harassed, defamed, and financially drained by the government believe this is a free country. I realize that many Americans doubt that we are still a "free people." They doubt that this country can still be characterized as "the land of the free" (even though we are defended by "the brave").
But we continue to look to the Declaration of Independence as the defining articulation of what it means to be an American and to live in America.
Besides being our initial founding document, the Declaration of Independence guided, and continues to guide, our understanding of the US Constitution. It provides the foundation, the foundational principles, and the intention of our Founding generation in drafting the Constitution and creating the government it did. It continues to be our nation's moral compass. That is, except when certain factions try to divide our nation's people and communities according to race.
America is the product of religion and world history, namely western civilization (the Bible, Rome's Cicero, Tacitus, Livy, Plutarch, etc), the influence of English and French Enlightenment philosophers (such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Baron de Montesquieu, Frederic Bastiat, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant), and the history, in particular, of Great Britain, our mother/parent country. The ol' saying that "we stand on the shoulders of others" is certainly true when it comes to this wonderful country.
Despite what those on the left may say, this country has been shaped by Judeo-Christian beliefs and culture. John Winthrop, who sailed across the Atlantic on board the ship Arbella in 1630, delivered the following sermon just before he and his fellow Puritans arrived in New England (where they settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony):
"We are entered into covenant with Him [God] for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant..........
To provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory... For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world."
As mentioned earlier, it was a call to God and a call for daily prayer at the convention center in Philadelphia in June 1787 by Ben Franklin that enabled the delegates to get beyond their petty differences and push forward and eventually come to a consensus regarding a new Constitution and a new form of government.
Furthermore, in his Farewell Address, President George Washington said: Liberty is "the palladium of your political safety and prosperity.... The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together. The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts-of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the
whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
A government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.
The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle....."
Go Back
The Declaration was "submitted to a candid world" in July 1776 as the American Revolution was just getting started. The American colonies/states fought successfully and against all odds when British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington (who had help from French General Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, and French Army troops) at Yorktown (VA) on October 19, 1781. The treaty of Paris, signed by American delegates Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and a representative of the King of Great Britain, King George III, on September 3, 1783, acknowledged the independence and sovereignty of all the American states.
Article I reads: "His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, New-Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode-Island & Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina & Georgia, to be free sovereign & Independent States; that he Treats with them as such, and for himself his Heirs & Successors relinquishes all Claims to the Government Propriety and Territorial Rights of the same & every Part thereof."
With respect to the Declaration of Independence, America was, and continues to be, founded on its "revolutionary" principles. She appeals to a higher standard than other countries. In America, we believe that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. All nations, all people, look to our country as a beacon of light and right. It's this principle, along with our commitment to individual Liberty that makes America a truly unique and legitimate nation.
I love America for her commitment to the Declaration and because it defines us as Americans. I know it defines me. I sing its praises whenever I speak to my Tea Party group and I sing its praises, and reference it, whenever possible when I write.
The Declaration is masterful and revolutionary because it explains the concept of Individual Sovereignty, which is the concept upon which our nation and our government system was based, and explains the proper purposes of government. Individual Sovereignty is the government philosophy that asserts that true sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments. Since government belongs inherently to the people, it must act in their best interests. And since government belongs to the people, whenever they believe it to be destructive of its purposes (as the Declaration explains), they have the right to "throw off" that government and resume all sovereign power over themselves until a new government is established. If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses (which they do by calling for an Article V Convention or pressuring their States to interpose and nullify abusive and unconstitutional federal laws and actions or in the last resort, to revolt or to secede), outside interference is justified. By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states' borders to protect the rights of citizens. Perhaps that is why it is important to maintain friendly relations with like-minded nations.
Related to the concept of "individual sovereignty" is the understanding that a person has the right of conscience - the right to think and believe as he or she chooses. A person has a functioning mind and the actual or potential ability to make choices based on reason and awareness, in accordance with his or her belief set, which may or may not be justified by religious teachings. Young children have such minds and are therefore also sovereign, but the ability to use reason is something that develops as the child's brain matures, and therefore the parents have a responsibility to exercise some of the sovereignty rights on behalf of their children. This "parental obligation" creates a moral obligation on the part of parents to provide wisdom and judgement, as well as education oversight and material needs for their children. Upon the age of maturity, the child becomes a fully sovereign human being and is emancipated from his or her parents. Individual sovereignty also explains why we as Americans have the rights to life, to speak freely, to exercise our religious beliefs, to assemble, to protest, to keep and bear firearms for self-protection, and to be safe and secure in our homes and to have our privacy respected. These are inalienable rights, which means they attach to us by way of our very humanity.
Also related to the concept of individual sovereignty is the notion that Americans have the right to the fruits of their own labor and should be minimally taxed. The fundamental right to acquire, possess, and sell property is the reason Jefferson included the term "and the pursuit of happiness" as one of the inalienable rights included in the Declaration of Independence. The fundamental right to acquire, possess, and sell property is the backbone of opportunity; it incentivizes us and gives us a valid reason to get a good education, to decide on a good and prosperous career, to save our money, to invest, to seize opportunities, and to invest in starting a business. It's the most practical means to protect one's assets and the most practical means to pursue happiness. This right, along with the free enterprise system (articulated by Adam Smith in "Wealth of Nations") that stems from it, is the source of individual prosperity, national prosperity, and the foundation of economic liberty.
In short, our country was founded on the revolutionary notion of Individual Liberty. I love that about America. I am free. Every day I can exercise my freedoms without government oppression or suppression (as long as I am not around members or organizations on the extreme left, although I'm confident I can hold my own).
"Liberty" is defined as the state of being free to exercise one's inalienable and civil rights and to be free from unreasonable government control. Liberty means a person can freely exist within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority (government) on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.
I doubt that those rounded up after the January 6 so-called "insurrection" believe this is a free country. I doubt Donald Trump believes this is a free country after what the Democrats in Congress did to him while he was duly elected to serve as president. I doubt that all those (politically targeted) who have been needlessly and unfairly harassed, defamed, and financially drained by the government believe this is a free country. I realize that many Americans doubt that we are still a "free people." They doubt that this country can still be characterized as "the land of the free" (even though we are defended by "the brave").
But we continue to look to the Declaration of Independence as the defining articulation of what it means to be an American and to live in America.
Besides being our initial founding document, the Declaration of Independence guided, and continues to guide, our understanding of the US Constitution. It provides the foundation, the foundational principles, and the intention of our Founding generation in drafting the Constitution and creating the government it did. It continues to be our nation's moral compass. That is, except when certain factions try to divide our nation's people and communities according to race.
America is the product of religion and world history, namely western civilization (the Bible, Rome's Cicero, Tacitus, Livy, Plutarch, etc), the influence of English and French Enlightenment philosophers (such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Baron de Montesquieu, Frederic Bastiat, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant), and the history, in particular, of Great Britain, our mother/parent country. The ol' saying that "we stand on the shoulders of others" is certainly true when it comes to this wonderful country.
Despite what those on the left may say, this country has been shaped by Judeo-Christian beliefs and culture. John Winthrop, who sailed across the Atlantic on board the ship Arbella in 1630, delivered the following sermon just before he and his fellow Puritans arrived in New England (where they settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony):
"We are entered into covenant with Him [God] for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant..........
To provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory... For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world."
As mentioned earlier, it was a call to God and a call for daily prayer at the convention center in Philadelphia in June 1787 by Ben Franklin that enabled the delegates to get beyond their petty differences and push forward and eventually come to a consensus regarding a new Constitution and a new form of government.
Furthermore, in his Farewell Address, President George Washington said: Liberty is "the palladium of your political safety and prosperity.... The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together. The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts-of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the
whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
A government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.
The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle....."
Home
Contact
About
Service Rates
Privacy Policy
Follow on Facebook
Subscribe to Newsletters
Rss Feed
Keywords
Eastern NC Now & ENC NOW © Copyright 1998-2024 All Rights Reserved.
