When you celebrated the 4th of July, did you know what was said in the Declaration of Independence? Did you know it contains a list of grievances the colonists had against the king?
Those complaints have an eerie parallel to what Americans face today: a daily erosion of freedom by government on every level.
Many colonists came to the new world for religious freedom. Others wanted personal freedoms and less government control of their lives.
It worked for a while, until they chafed at mandates from across the ocean; the king lost support. That’s what’s happening now to our president, for similar reasons.
Consider: Despite slipping polls, Barack Obama continues steamrolling efforts to rapidly transform this country.
Can you imagine what his January state of the union speech will sound like if he accomplishes everything he intends to do by the end of this year?!?
How many times will he use the words “I” and “me”?
His campaign promised “change.” We got it, with more on the way, ready or not.
He also campaigned about “hope” and, yes, people today are filled with hope, but not the kind Obama had in mind.
More and more Americans are hoping that things aren’t what they seem, because they don’t like what they see, and they don’t want more.
Americans are seeing through the style and rhetoric of the Obama campaign to what those words meant and what they’d do to our system of government and our country.
It’s clear Obama’s goal is to increase the size and power of the federal government beyond what most Americans thought possible.
Under Obama, the federal government grows by leaps and bounds. There’s more government intrusion into the private sector than at any time in history, with more planned.
It’s an increase of federal power into virtually all aspects of American life – business, economy, education, culture, banking and real estate – to say nothing of the ravaging of the Constitution and the judiciary. All that created major changes in the political landscape and confusion to our system.
Are we the No. 1 Western democracy, or an old-world, European socialist state?
Is Obama a traditional Democrat/liberal or a radical leftist, socialist or Marxist?
Look at the changes he’s wrought and what’s planned; it’s clear such designations aren’t extreme.
The government used billions in bailout money for corporations but it was a massive takeover of private enterprise. Washington’s now in banking, finance, insurance and auto businesses, not to be profitable but to suit political/social agendas – for example, coercing carmakers to build “green” cars without regard to consumer demand or technical possibility.
Obama mandates executive salaries and hiring as well as sending billions in stimulus money to states controlling how and where it’s spent. The only tangible result is growing unemployment and more states facing drastic financial losses as the economy slows.
He’s got the government calling the shots on student loans, mortgages, credit cards, union contracts and investor returns. Through it all, contract obligations have been trashed.
As this progresses, the country faces a burgeoning debt in the trillions, and Obama plans increases to some $12 trillion. According to Obama, debt is good, and more is better. No word on how it will be repaid, or who will pay it.
Apparently, he hopes Americans will handle it and have enough change in their wallets to pay the bill for his excesses. Of course, by that time, he and his administration will be long gone.
Further, Obama wants to change our health care system and in the process, put private insurers out of business. In addition to not addressing the true cost and who really pays for it, he doesn’t tell the truth about how people will lose personal control and choice for their own health needs. Experience shows government health care means lowered quality and rationing of services.
Obama bought into the “global warming” fiction and decries dependence on foreign oil. He thinks he’ll “solve it” with “cap and trade,” a system of regulations, fees, fines and penalties. It’s the ultimate coercion of Americans to change how they live, dress, work and transport themselves.
Bottom line, energy prices will skyrocket, as will consumer prices putting the squeeze on businesses and every person, but Obama and the politicians will “feel good” about their efforts to fool mother nature and at the same time, enable “certain” investors to make a financial killing trading the so-called (and imaginary) carbon credits.
How does any of this relate to the colonists and the king?
How about this one: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Offices to harass our people and eat out their substance.” Just think of the IRS and Obama’s czars and every bureaucrat!
Here are others:
- prevented needed laws from being passed, didn’t abide by or ignored existing laws or passed laws further infringing freedoms;
- resisted changes unless he got more power in exchange;
- punished representatives for enforcing the right of self-governance;
- ignored the colonies immigration needs;
- judges were dependent on him for their jobs;
- subjected colonists to foreign jurisdictions, following foreign laws;
- disrupted foreign trade;
- manipulated the right to jury trials;
- arbitrarily imposed taxes.
There are more, but even these would be enough.
The Declaration of Independence was written, not as a desire for “no” government but for “self-government” respecting individual rights and freedom.
The founders wrote that government gets power from the people, and when it infringes on equality, life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness, becoming destructive to these ends, people have the right and duty to alter or abolish it, instituting a new government to provide for their future security.
We can do it with our vote.
