IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

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The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

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 of 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 shewn, 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.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain 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 harrass 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 & 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 Brittish 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 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.

[Cooley Hurd]

1. Jefferson hit it out of the park!

[freshwest]

2. Thanks! but we're also told there was an unedited version:

The Declaration of Independence as Thomas Jefferson originally presented it.

The Unedited Declaration of Independence - Thomas Jefferson, 1776

Note the emboldened text:

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

to MohRokTah:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5193766

Which I interpret to mean the slave trade, the paying of natives and importing mercenaries to attack Americans although that was addressed elsewhere. Others say this paragraph was about slaves rising up against their chains. But many blacks throughout history felt the document promised emancipation. Dred Scott was encouraged by the Bill of Rights but lose to the corporate SCOTUS o his day, but later freed. So I respect both views, yet will entertain another one.

Jefferson and the rest of the Founders are rightfully called out on their own slave holding, plantation owning ways, as most of the influential men of the time were - but not all of them. Definitely not Thomas Paine, when he wrote:

African Slavery In America

A very good read that excoriates on every level the creation by international actors and even more so, the practice of slavery in the America of his day:

http://www.constitution.org/tp/afri.htm

Yet the bigotry continues:

http://progressiveerupts.blogspot.com/2013/02/african-slavery-in-america-by-thomas.html

The Founding Fathers had arrayed against their ideals from the Enlightenment the most vicious and entrenched set of corporations that were able to influence nations on both sides of the Atlantic. They were of the most politically influential international corporations. Some of these still exist, they outlive us by centuries, but are not in the public mind. We know how hard it is to fight fossil fuel, munitions and other corporations that devastate our planet and the lives of people. It remains a stalemate.

Thomas Jefferson Feared an Aristocracy of Corporations

http://www.thenation.com/blog/37038/thomas-jefferson-feared-aristocracy-corporations

USSC decisions shows how well positioned they are now, just as they were then. None of this was in a vacuum, and the elimination of slavery required a Civil War and amendments, all of which are being threatened by current calls for an Article 5 Convention to open up the Constitution to be retooled by the Koch brothers. It is what the Reichwings wants more than anything, to make null and void the words of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most inspirational pieces of literature in the world:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/340/Declaration.html

Self-evident to them, but not to many of their day, nor to many in the world now, unfortunately. That view has always been controversial to some, NOT self-evident. We see this clearly from the USSC which is busily taking our human rights, granting them to corporations.

The elements that fought the philosophy of the Founders, removing the power of social place by birth, as a universal right, were not going to let go that power easily. They extorted the men whose philosophy they denied any validity to except when they could narrowly apply it to themselves. They reject the overall purpose of government to enforce our rights now, as they did then. Such exclusion cannot last and must be ended.

There was an opposing philosophy which still maintains it is all about one's blood and birth, condemning all persons who were not white males with inherited wealth to penury and servitude. The Founders were set in a nation that was not the nation which evolved from their time, but were instead living in a time of violent and unashamed privilege.

That revolting and unjust philosophy sought to negate the ideals of the Founders as much then as it did less than a century later when it erupted again, lying in wait, founding the Confederacy, in direct opposition to 'All Men Are Created Equal.'

Their leaders called that belief the fatal mistake of the Founders, against 'God's Will' in their 'Christianity,' when the Founders sought to escape that. They have not changed their words much.

One should remember that the Founders were Deists, not Dominionists. Neither Jesus or any other defined deity is in their writings. It's why they are being written out of history:

'Nature's God' explores 'heretical origins' of religion in U.S.

But the title of the book referred to is actually:

Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic

Not sure why the newspaper went with an alternate title. The book reviews I posted or the OP is worth the read:

http://metamorphosis.democraticunderground.com/1218137537

It is also why propaganda is being used to turn modern Americans away from them and our government. But it's not really the men that are objectionable, nor slavery, devil worship or the alleged international conspiracy they claim to hate, while saying nothing of the corporatist conspiracy that takes away human rights. The salesjob being presented claims they have something new and better to offer. It is not new, and it is not better:

They [who] seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers...call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 15, 1941

What we are being forced into with corporations being treated as people is exactly what is happening now. The corporations of today, just as those days, had more power than nation-states and can not be left to themselves by a free people, as we keep hearing espoused, because:

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

~ Thomas Jefferson

It is the seed of Equality the Founders wanted to plant and see grow they hate, as it interferes with their profits:

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

~ George Washington

The simple words of the Founders led the USA to embark on ending the slave trade in time, as Jefferson himself realized it must do, and which the Confederacy rejected, along with the rest of the Enlightenment:

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Imagine ourselves with our consciousness grounded in 2014 being transported back in time to those days. Where it was a fact of life that black men, women and children were displayed naked, like livestock, with no regard to their humanity, natural modesty or other feelings. And forbidden to learn to read, to object to their families being torn asunder for commerce. And where rape, beatings, torture and death were going on either in full sight or known about.

Just picture that reality in which this nation was born, like the Boko Harum world, where kidnapping and being anti-education for girls and women, but also boys and men, is seen by them as a good thing, like it was here by some. And the kidnapped are sold off for commerce, their bodies not their own. And resistance to that is rewarded with death. And what is it that they claim they are doing this for?

To stop western ideas. Not just music, movies, atheism, homosexuality or the evils of capitalism, although that is likely how they got their first converts. But to stop the ideas the Founding Fathers stood for, Equality and the Freedom of Religion, and so many other things.

Now we have the stories out of Thailand where men have been drawn and quartered by boats to keep their slaves in the international fishing business in line and living in tortorous, deadly conditions for the profits of the owners of the fleet of fishing ships. Many other examples are available. because Equality is not a settled issue in the world now, no more that it was then, by any means.

The horrors of the slave trade in practice was worse than most can imagine, and is why the voices of people of color with all the outrage and pain they've known for years, despite the discomfort of whites or the privileged, MUST BE WELCOMED as our kindred spirits opposing reactionaries. Those are the enemies, not those we need to be educated by whenever they grant us the gift of their wisdom and pain, and how they survived and their remedies to move forward.

We must not forget what underlies such systems of brutality and genocide both then and now, the belief that all people are NOT created Equal. Many facets of this are being discussed and fought over now, but that's the belief system we must overcome, or we will all be undone.

JMHO, quickly penned.

[lastlib]

3. Excellent! Wish I could Recommend!

will Kick for attention

Just a few days ago, Icky Ricky Santorum stated publicly! that there were good reasons that the Founding Fathers did not extend the right to vote to everyone, specifically, women, blacks (slaves), and those who did not own land. The mentality of the far-right frightens me. It's the same mentality that justified and defended the slave trade, the subjugation of women, and the outright murder of Native Americans. Now it justifies the subjugation of women through the denial of medical choices and unequal pay, defends racial segregation, massive income inequality and immigration rights--all to protect the privilege of the few at the expense of the many.