Happy 4th Of July, Reposted from elsewhere

Imagine going to prison.

The cold steel of the manacles on your wrists, the way the chains make your footfalls clumsy, the chafing of the bracelets through the ankles of your orange jumpsuit. The feel of the guards hands on your arms. Your heart rate quickens as you approach the door to your cell.

There. An intake of breath as you cross the threshold, never quite enough. The atmosphere here seems stifling, too little for too many people to breathe. The door to your cell slams shut. The metal clashing – not clanging – against the doorframe, the locks engaging.

There’s a hot dull pain in your chest as you contemplate your future behind these bars. You are totally at the mercy of someone else. Your life is no longer your own. The choices presented to you throughout your day are totally without meaning.You live at the capricious whim of Someone Else.

You have no freedom.

I made that sound really bad, didn’t I? Now imagine it being real. Imagine being incarcerated. I want you to feel it, if just for a moment.Today is the 4th Of July. Today we celebrate, with marching bands and parades and cookouts and (where permitted by law) fireworks. We celebrate the birth of the American nation, the freest country on earth. We celebrate 230 years of freedom, and the reasonable expectation of many, many more.

But that’s a lie.

Handed down through generations, as a matter of fact. The 4th of July has nothing to do with the birth of America. Neither the Constitution nor the Bill Of Rights, both of which secure inviolable individual freedom against encroaching government, were written on this day. The Articles Of Confederation where not written on this day. It does not mark the date of any battle, though if a battle occurred on this day somewhere in the past, it has been lost to history.

No, today marks the approval by the Second Continental Congress of the Declaration Of Independence – a document that has as much to do with the birth of the United States as apples do to bobsleds. The Declaration Of Independence was a statement of grievances the Congressional Representatives of the colonists had with England. It is also their kiss-off to the fatherland, a literary middle-finger to the king, a “screw you” to the legitimate authority of the time.Emphasis on “legitimate.” See, the Representatives of the Second Continental Congress, were not citizens of America, or of the United States. Such words had not yet entered the language to describe the government of the North American continent. They were citizens of England. They had no country to go to – they had not formed one yet. They were in a state of insurrection, armed rebellion…to their own government. They were, in the purest sense of the word, terrorists. They had betrayed their nation, taken up arms against it, preached the gospel of resistance to such masses as would listen, encouraged the killing of their brethren, those that supported the king. They were the very definition of the word “criminal.”

The English government was the legitimate ruling power of the day. It is not too much of a logical leap to compare it to the government of America – it had the legal authority to enact legislation, pass and collect taxes, punish criminals, do anything and everything that any government throughout time has done. It had as much claim to the lives and loyalty of the founding fathers as our government has upon us today, you and me, right now.

The Declaration Of Independence lays out, in detail, the grievances held against this legitimate authority:

The king refused to pass certain laws his citizens requested.
He disbanded legislatures that attempted to pass said laws without his consent.
He refused to pass re-districting laws for the convenience of the provincial governments.
He requested the provincial legislatures to meet in places they did not desire.
He dissolved public assemblies that opposed his laws.
He put judges on English - not local - salary.
He created new government offices.
He kept the army ready during times of peace.
He convened military tribunals for soldiers convicted of crimes against civilians, refusing to let his soldiers be tried by a biased civilian court.
He blockaded cities that refused to obey his laws.
He enacted taxes his citizens did not agree with.

And that’s just transcribing a few of the beefs they had with the king.

That list reads like something from the Anarchist Cookbook. Imagine the sheer stupidity if one were to go to war with the American government today because the president created a new government office. Or because he didn’t pass re-districting laws. Today is the day we celebrate the criminal actions of a handful of rich high-society men against reasonable authority. A small minority created, out of whole cloth, an entire philosophical rebellion against the “president” of the day, and the government he led.

Why?Because, through even the lightest touch of the hand of English law, they felt that cold steel around their wrists, the guards’ hands pushing them forward, the halting steps as their chains impeded their progress. They had one guiding star, one supreme belief that led them to call some of their brethren to arms, that they might kill some of their other brethren who believed something different than them.

They believed in freedom - the right of every man, woman, and responsible child to do WHATEVER they so wished, so long as they harmed no other. Such an extraordinary thought, handed down, almost in secret, as generation after generation passed on earth – people have the right to live as they want, do as they want, BE what they want, and as long as they cause no harm to another, no single person or group of people on earth has the legitimate authority to interfere with their lives. It did not matter to these men whether a tax was a penny or a thousand pounds – it was illegitimate if those it affected did not have a say in its passage.

They believed the words of John Locke: People are most free in a state of nature i.e. people are most free when they are governed by the fewest laws. Put another way: The government governs best that governs least.

Furthermore, they knew where the legitimate authority of the time would take its laws…to the logical conclusion we’ve seen legitimate authority take its laws throughout the 20th century. Millions of civilians dead at the hands of their own legal governments – China, Russia, Cambodia, Germany, Armenia, a whole host of small African nations…a laundry list of homicides enacted by government against those who believed it would protect them and played by the rules.

Our own government is not immune. Look up Operation Keelhaul.

Feel the dirt under your knees? See the shallow pit you just dug, open before you? Feel that metal dig into the back of your head? Your family will be billed the cost of the bullet...

Or maybe: Your family is kneeling beside you.

This was what the founding fathers feared so, that they pledged their Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honor to oppose – power, unchecked, unfettered power exercised over those who had harmed no other.

Yes, the broke the law. Yes, they were criminals. Yes, they betrayed their fellow citizens, their nation, their leader. All over taxes that amounted to less than a handful of pennies they could spend without thought. All over courts and judges who held allegiance, not to the citizens they tried, but to a power that wished to control them. All over governmental edicts designed not to safeguard liberty, but to make criminals out of men and women and responsible children, who wanted to do as they wished, so long as they did no other harm.

All over the clashing shut of the prison door. The orange jumpsuit. The metal bands around your wrists.

They opposed the legal authority of the day, because they believed in freedom. In their right, you right, my right to be left alone. They opposed legal authority because since it opposed that right, it was no longer legitimate, as no government is that opposes that right.

They declared war on their own government, on their own country, because in the hand illegitimate law they felt the chains. Heard the cell door slam shut. Felt the muzzle of the gun pressed to the back of their head.

So today we honor the actions of criminals, who in declaring war on their own legitimate government, gave true freedom the only chance it has ever gotten to grow and prosper. They watered the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants – its natural fertilizer – and gave us a chance to live without fear of chains, of cell doors slamming shut, of the gun pressed to the back of our head.

We honor men like Carter Braxton, a wealthy trader, who lost his business to the war and died a pauper.

Thomas Nelson Jr. aimed the first cannon of the battle of Yorktown at his own home after Cornwallis took it over as his headquarters. He died bankrupt as a result.

Francis Lewis lost his home and property to the English. His wife and son died in English prison.

John Hart was driven from his dying wife’s bedside by the advance of the English troops. They destroyed his farm, his home, all his property. He took to the forests and lived more than a year there before dying of exhaustion and a broken heart.

Today, we honor these criminals.

These heroes.

Happy 4th Of July.