July 22, 1998
They were, at the time, described as a bunch of extremists, hot-heads and uncompromising radicals, dangerous because their beliefs threatened the order of the world. When they took up arms against their government, they were branded rebels.
Their grievances against that government were legion.
They claimed that their government was no longer in touch with the populace it ruled, arbitrarily implementing laws and regulations which harmed them while preventing them from forming their own local governments and passing their own local laws and regulations.
They claimed their government was circumventing its own elected legislative body, with the chief executive ruling by decree. Other laws, they claimed, were instituted only after they agreed to relinquish certain other rights to the government.
They claimed their government had saddled them with a repressive bureaucracy which harassed the people and taxed them out of hearth and home, taxation exacted without the consent of those governed. That same bureaucracy collected their names and kept its records hidden from them.
They claimed their government had established a court system beholden only to itself, which had assumed the role of law-maker. Their own government, they said, was transporting them halfway around the world to face trial, without jury, for "pretended offences."
They claimed their own government had taken up arms against them and was, at the time, preparing to invade their land with armies of foreign mercenaries. That same government, they said, endeavored to prevent them from resisting by attempting to control and confiscate arms of any type.
These hot-headed, uncompromising radicals declared their independence from that government on July 4, 1776. It's interesting to see the parallels to where we stand today.
Like the American colonial revolutionaries, we too have a government no longer in touch with the populace it rules, arbitrarily implementing laws and regulations which suppress the liberty of the populace while over-ruling local ordinances.
We too have a government which circumvents its own elected legislative body — at both the state and national level — via Executive Orders. We too have a government which dangles huge grants in front of cash-strapped municipalities and school districts, to lure them into compliance with regulations which would never be passed by our own Legislature, regulations which strip away individual rights and liberties in pursuit of greater and greater dependence on un-elected bureaucrats and social engineers.
Like the Founding Fathers, we too have a government bureaucracy run amok, and a tax burden approaching the breaking point to fund that bureaucracy — many of those taxes added not by any vote of Congress or Legislature, but quietly implemented by the decree of the President. As well, we have a government rapidly implementing plans to track our individual identities from birth to grave ... plans we never gave consent to.
We also have a government court system which seems to think it, too, has the power to make laws and regulate our lives; we've seen it reflected in federal control of the Texas prison system for years. And soon we, too, will enjoy the fruits of the establishment of the United Nations' International Criminal Court — where we can be tried for "crimes against humanity," such as speaking out against the United Nations. No jury, no right to face your accuser, no guarantees.
Like the revolutionaries of 1776, we too have a government which is intent on limiting our chances of resisting tyranny by banning or collecting weapons from us. And like our forefathers, our government is also actively working to base foreign mercenaries — through its participation in a standing U.N. army — on our shores.
Like Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, our modern government refers to those who oppose it as political extremists, radicals, dangerous subversives.
Unlike our forefathers, however, none of us have actively taken up arms in rebellion.
Yet.