Words that stand the test of time

The Declaration of Independence contained a list of grievances to explain why civic-minded men and women felt compelled to resist the power of the British Empire. Though the document is over 200 years old, these grievances still resonate. As many of the Founders feared, today’s Federal Government could, in many ways, stand in for King George III:

He has refuted his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good...
The government in Washington is wholly incapable of meaningful immigration reform and establishing an effective border policy. Moreover, it continues massive pork-project spending while resisting financial reform, despite the looming entitlements tide that will shortly bankrupt us.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance...

Public employees now number over 21,000,000...more than are engaged in manufacturing in this country. Inefficiencies and waste in an ever-multiplying number of Federal programs cost the U.S. taxpayer billions annually. Harassment by petty bureaucrats enforcing vague regulations is now an ingrained part of American life.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures...

Our foreign policy has become ever more militarized. No other nation in the world spends as much on ‘defense;’ our budget equals over 40% of the world's military spending. We traded the armed neutrality of George Washington for an interventionist policy that makes us a party to every neighborhood squabble in the world. The Military-Industrial Complex is now a major seam of our public policy process.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws...
NAFTA, GATT and other treaties subject U.S. policy to international review. This undermines our sovereignty and ties us town, much as the thousands of tiny cords bound Gulliver to the ground in Lilliput. A policy of armed, prudent neutrality requires us to refrain from interfering in the sovereign affairs of other nations…and refusing to tolerate such interference in our own.

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences...
Americans have largely accepted that suspected terrorists will be tried behind closed doors, with little or no public review. In the name of protecting intelligence, our government now has the power to virtually ‘disappear’ people. War has always been the health of the state, and this war threatens to feed an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of the Federal Government.

The Spirit of ’76 still asks the question: does the Star Spangled Banner yet wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave? Will we defeat very real foreign threats only to find out we have met the enemy…and it is now us?