Independence Day

Tomorrow, I would recommend that you read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety. Not just the stirring opening paragraphs, which some of us may have committed to memory, or the closing words on pledging "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" to the battle ahead. It's not a bad idea, in this day and age, to read the "train of abuses" which Thomas Jefferson enumerated in order to justify breaking away from Great Britain in 1776 -- those reasons which "compelled them to the separation."

You will find in that long list an overarching theme - the abhorrence which the Founding Fathers held for tyranny in all its many guises and manifestations. Things such as abducting colonial prisoners, transporting them across seas, and holding them for "pretended offences." If that sounds a great deal like "extraordinary rendition" or the unraveling rationale for holding Guantanamo inmates without charges or a fair hearing, it's probably no coincidence. The United States has itself sunk to the level of using the tactics of a tyrant -- throwing prisoners in dungeons without recourse, never to be heard from again, all in the name of "state security."

A moment's reflection reveals that from the British perspective of 1776, tyrannical practices were advantageous. It kept the Colonies under the iron heel of the English Crown for about 160 years. What the king said was the law, and while the American colonists were granted rights such as local governing bodies, in essence any of these rights could be taken away arbitrarily, as Jefferson itemized in his "reasons." The British could quarter soldiers in your house; they could enter your house without a warrant and ransack it, looking for evidence of sedition; they could tax you what they wanted, and you weren't allowed to vote on the imposition; they could commandeer soldiers from the Colonies to fight in British foreign wars; they used Colonists to execute other Colonists for offenses against the Crown.

The Founding Fathers got mad as hell and they weren't going to take it anymore. Jefferson's magnificent bill of particulars throbs with passionate belief in the essential Rights of Man. It should make any American who cares about this country proud of his heritage, and jealous of guarding the democratic principles which these men laid down.

I just wonder, at this point, how proud they would be of us. The Founding Fathers, in 1776, put together a ragtag Continental Army to stare down the mightiest military and navy in the world. Signing the Declaration of Independence was akin to autographing one's own death warrant, and indeed a number of signers died in the war which followed under terrible circumstances because of their act of treason against England.
They thought it was worth it.

In modern America, a terrorist attack in September, 2001, knocked down some buildings and killed innocent Americans. I think it's fair to say that the openness of American society may have contributed to the feasibility of the plot organized by Saudi and Egyptian radicals. Does this one event portend the eternal insecurity of the United States, which became, in the two hundred years since the Revolution, a military power far more dominant than the British ever were? Was it necessary, in order never to expose ourselves to any threat whatsoever to pass the Patriot Act with all its violations of the Bill of Rights; to pass the Military Commissions Act with its abrogation of habeas corpus; to sanction systematic violations of the Fourth Amendment by exonerating telecommunications companies which spied on Americans? What does that say about American courage in this day and age? We'll dump the Bill of Rights if our leaders will just promise nothing will ever go "boom!" again?

I'm picturing a Signer of the Declaration in the dark days of the Revolution who has been captured by the British, as five of them were. They were tortured and horribly mistreated as prisoners of war. Yet they had the courage of their convictions. They put it all on the line, their lives, their fortunes. What would such a patriot say, returned to Earth to view modern America and the new, homegrown "train of abuses?" I think we owe it, as a matter of our own sacred honor, to do better than we've done over the last eight years, to vindicate the courage that put this great country on the map.