NEW DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

I started wondering several weeks ago about our Declaration of Independence. I thought about it for a long while, and wondered what it would look like if it were rewritten today and addressed our own federal government. The feds have become abusive under Presidents and Congresses of both parties. Of course I am absolutely not calling for the violent overthrow of the government, but rather a new constitutional convention to address the abuses of our current government. I now present my updated version:

When in the Course of national events, it becomes necessary for people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another, 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 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 only 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 shows, 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 citizens of the United States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present American government is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the citizens. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.


They have entered into entangling alliances with foreign powers;

They have joined international organizations that are not equitably financed and repeatedly attempt to usurp our national sovereignty;

They have placed an unbearable tax burden on the people, largely without consent;

They have allocated for themselves exorbitant salaries and benefits far and above the means of the populace;

They have entered into trade pacts that have decimated American manufacturing;

They have accumulated debts that cannot be paid for many generations;

They have interfered in commerce and distorted the free markets;

They have ignored our federal Constitution and our state Constitutions;

They have usurped the power of the States to govern their own people;

Governors have called together state legislative bodies at places unusual and uncomfortable for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with their dictates;

They have made illegal the right of the people to call for change of government;

They have refused to secure our borders and prevent illegal migration;

They have continually erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass the people, and eat out their substance;

They have compiled large quantities of information on the populace for unknown purposes;

They have refused to address our energy needs and forced the people to pay exorbitant sums as a result;

They have refused to impose term limits on themselves and have thus attempted to form an elite aristocracy;

They have either completely refused to prosecute or lightly punished those among them accused or convicted of malfeasance;

They have failed to properly compensate or provide care for our soldiers wounded in combat;

They have refused to constrain commercial monopolies, forcing the people to conduct business at unreasonable rates and in unusual ways;

They have limited our right to petition the government for redress of grievances;

They have hidden appropriation of large sums of money from the people;

They have limited the right of the people to keep and bear arms and have compiled lists of private armaments;

They have repeatedly violated the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,

papers, and effects, against unreasonable searched and seizures;

They have abused the concept of eminent domain;

They have violated the people’s freedom of religion by threatening to tax religious leaders who speak of political matters;

They have disparaged the right of the people to retain rights not enumerated in the Constitution;

They have sought to reinforce and support despotic foreign powers;

They have abdicated their responsibility to protect American citizens abroad.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only with repeated injury. A government, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define tyranny, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our government. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by them to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our founding. We have appealed to their justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common history. They have been deaf to the voices of justice. 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 people of the United States, by authority of the good people of this nation, solemnly publish and declare, that these states are, and of right ought to be, free and independent; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the federal government, and that all political connection between them is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have the full power to call for a new Constitutional Convention to correct the abuses and usurpations heretofore enumerated. And for the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.