Today we celebrate an historic moment where men seeking freedom made a declaration of independence. They backed up this declaration by winning a war over their idea:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Today, we may have lost all knowledge of what it must have been like to seek independence from suffocating control. Yet as we move to the future, it is certain that control is creeping back in. By majority we are seeking the government to intervene into almost every avenue of human activity and beliefs. We have passed too many laws and regulations and created a monstrous bureaucracy to manage them. One might refer to the declaration and its five parts, including a more detailed look at the preamble and the indictment. When we revisit this declaration, we just might find some resemblance to past history.
At this very moment our government has debt and unfunded liabilities to the staggering amount of $73 trillion. Our founding fathers had grievances against King George for a variety of reasons, but taxing the colonies for the heavy debt incurred from the seven years war, without representation, was one of the biggest. Yet today, people do not seem concerned with the indebtedness of our nation. Every time we insist government intervene we must expect further indebtedness to foreign powers and lessened benefits. There is a price for voter appeasement, and that price will at some point become reality. When that arrives you can expect the price to effect numerous generations.
Government mandates are born when the populace will no longer accept their independence. Too many are now on board the a runaway train of dependency. Maybe one day we will declare our independence again. Imagine a day if we all practiced healthy habits of diet, exercise and moderation of vices, there might not be the need for so much healthcare, insurance, nor the mandate to control what you have the Liberty to do now independently. Maybe one day we will be energy independent that will keep our sons and daughters from defending hostile foreign shores. Maybe one day our treasury will not need as much money as it does now, nor create tax laws and regulations that deprive of us the pursuit of happiness. Maybe one day we will see all politicians are in the business of promising more than they can deliver and we will declare independence of party and demand accountability, performance and obligation to the people. Maybe one day soon these truths will be self-evident again and each year we will remind ourselves to commit to our declaration of independence. We should never stop dreaming of the day. It is our unalienable right to pursue happiness.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. Thomas Jefferson, composer of the original draft of the document.
