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Monday, July 06, 2015

America: Mankind's Second Chance

38-year-old King George III ruled the largest empire that planet Earth had ever seen.

The Declaration of Independence, approved July 4, 1776, listed the reasons why Americans declared their independence from the King:

“He has made judges dependent on his will alone …
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 …
To subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution …
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us …
For imposing taxes on us without our consent …
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury …
For … establishing … an arbitrary government …
For … altering fundamentally the forms of our governments …
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 …
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 …”

33-year-old Thomas Jefferson’s original rough draft of the Declaration contained a line condemning slavery: “He has waged cruel war against human nature itself … in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither … suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold.”

A few delegates objected, and since the Declaration needed to pass unanimously and time was running short with the British invading New York, the line condemning slavery was unfortunately omitted.

(Read more here)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

With few differences, could easily describe life today in the USA.

Get rid of that treasonous foreigner!

Anonymous said...

9:26 Amen!!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...
With few differences, could easily describe life today in the USA.

Get rid of that treasonous foreigner!

July 6, 2015 at 9:26 AM

It's easy to blame him and the others in D.C. as I do too.

But in reality, we are angry at the wrong ones. Sure they make decisions and vote for us by proxy, but we are the ones who gave them that power to begin with.They rule by consent and we gave them our consent a long, long time ago.

As much as we don't like the things they do, their actions are not illegal in many regards. We ought to be angry at ourselves. Angry enough to do something about it to correct the many situations that we don't like and are harmful.

Regrettably, we won't. It's not that we can't, we just WON'T.

And I'm not even sure how to begin to correct these things. But I am learning. I am reading, researching, talking to people who do know. I am only one person but oftentimes that is all it takes.

Everybody is hurting and most don't like what they see and want to change it. When others get fed up enough they too will try to find ways to bring an end to this madness. But I think it will get much worse before it gets better. All we can do is try, and too many are not willing to do even that small thing. At least not yet. I am hopeful that will change in the near future.