In My Right Mind

"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." - Mark Twain

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Location: Universal City, Texas, United States

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take away everything you have." - Thomas Jefferson

Sunday, July 04, 2010

"Don't Tread On Me"

234 years ago, a group of English colonists gathered together to come up with a bold message to their King. They had tried and tried to receive justice as English citizens. They had reached out to the King with messages pleading time and time again to be treated fairly and for him to respect their rights as English citizens. This time the message they sent to King George III was different. It was an announcement that they were no longer his subjects. They declared their independence from England and its King.

Most of the men who bravely put their signature to The Declaration Of Independence forfeited their property and wealth. Some became bankrupt as a result of their participation in this declaration of defiance. The amount of sheer bravery it must have taken to take on - what would at the surface looked like a foolish, suicidal goal of independence - is beyond what most of us today even have the fortitude to even attempt.
Benjamin Franklin was reported to have declared: “We must all be prepared to hang together or we shall surely all hang separately.”

Of course, history shows that they were able to muster an army of like minded colonists who successfully defeated an army many times their size. And today, we celebrate our independence and freedom as a separate nation that this group of brave men initiated for us through their declaration of independence from tyranny.

But, it’s not just their declaration of independence from tyranny that is to be taken away from The Declaration Of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson back in 1776. These Founders of our great nation declared something revolutionary that would inform the government that they would form. They had the audacity to declare that people’s rights and personal liberty come not from any King or government, but from Nature’s God.

In this day and age where ideologies like socialism have become popular, where a lot of people look to the Federal Government for answers to every problem, it is important to recognize that this is a completely antithetical attitude and belief than that of those that gave us our Democratic Republic. They only saw government as a necessary evil. To them, the government’s only role was to secure the God-given personal liberty and rights that its citizens were born with.

To them, anytime the people started believing that they derived their rights and sustenance from government that tyranny was right around the corner. In fact, it is very un-American to adhere to the socialist/progressive/liberal agenda of the left in this country today. Too much was sacrificed from 1776 on for our personal liberty to throw it all away on these alien ideas about how Americans should be governed. From Thomas Paine, who helped start the desire for independence rolling with his popular pamphlet, “Common Sense”: “That government is best which governs least”.