The Redhunter

The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] 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 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 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 and 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 the 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 signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows:
New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts

John Hancock, Samual 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

It's just something you have to read ever year. And mo matter how many times I've read it the words hit home.

Because the Declaration really is our primary document. Yes, we're governed by the Constitution. But our emotional heart is in the Declaration. It is what makes us unique as a nation. Other nations have tried, and failed. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man" (1789) just isn't the same. And France sadly degeneratated in the Robespierre's terror and Napoleon's military dictatorship. America, on the other hand, has only gotten better.

I know that I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before by writers more informed and eloquent than me. But some things just need saying again and again.
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As always, today's lead editorial in The Washington Times is a must-read:

Independence Day begins early every year with the whistles of errant bottle rockets and the sharp cracks of firecrackers. Perhaps it's the sunny summer weather that follows the soggy spring, but July Fourth is a happy holiday.

Instead of the sonorous tones of "Taps," or the even more moving moments of silence that resonateon Memorial Day, Independence Day explodes with sharp, celebratory sounds -- blares from bugles and trills from fifes, peals from bells, and blasts--the snap,crackle, boomoffireworks, accompanied by breathless ooohs and ahhs.

Yet, we must not forget that the freedom we celebrate today with barbecues and fireworks was paid for -- and is still being bought -- with the blood of our finest. The rockets' red glare and the bombs bursting in the air, which have become an integral part of the celebration, were essential to its foundation.

In fact, Francis Scott Key was inspired to write our national anthemafter watchinga British attack on Fort McHenry, not far from Baltimore."The Star-Spangled Banner"resonated, not simply because of its poetry, but becauseofthe proud parable of theAmerican spirit that it tells.
...
Yet, as we celebrate, let us not forget those who are far from home preserving our independence through the RPGs of regime loyalists in Iraq and the bullets of the shadowy remnants of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We must remember our soldiers who are fighting and dying -- to pass on that spirit of independence, a faint echo from the Liberty Bell, to former prisoners and slaves.

As Mr. Bush concluded in his 2003address aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, "All of you -- all this generation in our military -- haev takenupthe highest calling of history. You're defending your country and protecting theinnocent from harm. And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope -- a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'To the captives, 'come out,' -- and to those in darkness, 'be free.' "

Exactly.

Thanks to the soldiers of the Revolution we have our freedom. Thanks to all of the troops since then we have kept it. And thanks to those around the world today, it'll stay kept.

Have a happy Independence Day