Few documents in world history have united resounding moral clarity with long-term political success and human liberation, but even among that class the United States Declaration of Independence soars. Before the gritty details and compromises that would be necessary to establish the American state were hashed out - a process that remains imperfect and ongoing - the soul and future character of this nation were captured on paper in words no less photographic than pixels. It was a statement not of what could be or should be, but of an awakening already afoot in the spirit of mankind and manifest in the birth of a new civilization. And the degenerate, treasonous, corrupt nightmare that is the 21st-century Republican Party has turned every last bit of it on its head.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Paraphrase: We care deeply that the world understand why we seek independence from the British Crown, and are confident in the inherent reason and intelligence of mankind to be persuaded by a just cause whose time has come and whose moral basis is beyond reproach. We believe this will be apparent as our reasons arise from the same logic, common humanity, and hopes as given to all people by
Nature's God - the one that has established a world where human beings have free will to govern their own affairs by wisdom or by folly as they choose - as opposed to the "God's Nature" of the medieval darkness where human events were random occurrences of arbitrary Divine Will bereft of enlightened choice.
If Republicans were not such illiterate cargo cultists who try to claim a national heritage they continually betray, they would very likely consider the introductory paragraph of the Declaration blasphemous on both religious and nationalistic grounds: As no doubt the craziest fringe of the conservative monarchists of the 18th century did, although even they were capable of better rationalizations for their politics than the ludicrous anti-republic Republicans of this century. In the unhinged fascistic mentality of the Republican, the War of Independence and the republic it made possible were not the result of men of reason and ethics exhausting all peaceful recourses to address rational grievances, but of a bloody Old Testament God coming down from heaven and helping Chosen Ones to slaughter their enemies. They project their own insatiable, primal avarice and unreasoning Will to Power on to enlightened people they would sooner have chained to the bottom of the ocean as follow had they been contemporaries.
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.
No idea is more hated, despised, and feared by the modern conservative than the one so boldly articulated in this one sentence: That rights are an inherent and equal property of humanity, irrespective of family, economic status, or the desire of one group or one individual to devalue and subjugate another. Although ironic given its articulation by a slave-owner, and the fact that women would have to wait more than a century to be recognized as intelligent adults in a state born of such philosophy, the idea and the words that encode it are among the most powerful ever written. Rights are not things granted by states or conceded between people out of transient self-interest, but things which are intrinsic to being, and therefore their violation is a crime against nature. The reptilian mentality of the fascist that right and wrong are determined solely by the power to escape punishment and inflict it on others is nowhere to be found in this document. Nowhere in this document is the Dark Age barbarian / corporatist ideology that the power of the strong to subjugate the weak is its own justification.
Again, if Republicans ever bothered to read the Declaration rather than just mindlessly trying to wield it as a symbolf of power, they would probably denounce it as Communism or at very least naive, bleeding-heart nonsense. It dares to say that rights spring from humanity rather than from money, power, and bottomless malice toward their fellow human beings - the only sources of Republican political influence - and it further dares to say that these facts are obvious. This is why Republicans cannot tolerate or permit open, substantive debate whenever the power exists to sabotage, corrupt, or derail it, because they will always lose when their ideology is subjected to even the slightest intelligent scrutiny. They represent the Anti-Enlightenment - the darkening of the human mind and extinguishing of rational free will beneath unexamined impulse in furtherance of power. In place of arguments, they can offer only an unending and infinitely varied river of bald-faced lies, distractions, fallacies, and thought-terminating cliches.
The Declaration says that life is an inherent right of a person, and you may not kill them simply because you find them inconvenient, or want something they have, or hate them for being different than you. Republicans reject this self-evident moral absolute with the sneering contempt of a predator enjoying its prey's squeals, and take evident pride in the execution of innocents and people medically incapable of responsible judgment - they feel it shows how tough they are that they place zero value on any human life that isn't theirs or directly kindred to them. They are completely indifferent to the proven fact that racial minorities convicted of the same crime under the same circumstances are far more likely to be executed. Except when they themselves are slightly inconvenienced by others, and promptly crawl up on a cross, Republicans are content to secede from the human species and hold themselves to be above the petty concerns of truth and morality.
Not even the British monarchy against whom we fought in war comes close to reflecting the mentality of Republicans - in point of fact, the British monarchy of the 18th century was far more civilized, humane, and rational than the GOP today. Even more broadly, there do not appear to be any remotely adequate analogs to the GOP in Western civilization in general at the time - one would have to travel into the antiquated, despotic kingdoms of the Middle East or Asia to really find politics like theirs exerting such influence on the course of politics in the 18th century.
Probably the only power the fledgling United States directly encountered with any resemblance to today's Republicans would be the Barbary pirate states against which the US fought the eponymous Barbary Wars. They were very much a "private" feudal / market-based power that existed by preying on Mediterranean shipping, and their existence was every bit as apolitical, a-rational, murderous, greedy, and primally motivated as the GOP today. It was a pack of rich pirates ruling over petty city-state kingdoms, and now we are afflicted with much the same on our own territory - entire states of the "United" States that are little more than the private kingdoms of tiny, wealthy cabals who dictate state law and policy with impunity while everyone else has no rights, no opportunities, and is fed a steady diet of propaganda and racial/religious bigotry to divert and divide them.
The above clause further lists Liberty as an inherent right of humanity, which few who are not Republicans would dispute includes such things as not being denied the right to vote because you're a member of a demographic hostile to Republicans, not having a woman's internal organs seized by eminent domain (essentially what occurs with Forced Birth laws), not being tortured, and not being beaten and arrested for protesting Republican financiers.
The only liberties they concede - or invent out of thin air at the expense of real ones - are those that reinforce their own power over others: Unfettered access to firearms, because rich people can then hire well-armed professional mercenary armies that would easily slaughter ordinary people trying to defend themselves; redefining money as speech so that the wealthy can buy elections by controlling the information that people receive; and of course the Orwellian so-called "right-to-work," which is simply the denial of the labor pool's right to bargain with employers on an equal footing (because, of course, employers are Ubermensch and demanding equality from them would be a grave injustice). Meanwhile, an ever-larger proportion of ordinary life is criminalized, and the penalties for it become ever-more-draconian to satisfy Republican sadism and also extend their relative privileges by worsening the lives of everyone who doesn't have them.
When a conservative hears the word "liberty," they think it refers to their exclusive power to harm and prey on others and prevent those others from seeking justice. That's what they thought it meant in the Civil War when they were defending slavery while crying "freedom!" in battle; while George W. Bush was making speeches with every other word being "freedom" while he was slaughtering Iraqis for daring to defy his Divinely Appointed rule over them; and it's what they still mean every single time the word comes out of their mouths. To them, war is peace, slavery is freedom, and ignorance is strength - they are the low-rent version of the totalitarian nightmare Orwell envisioned, imposing their will through sabotage of democratic institutions and the petty tyranny of corporate dominion over our lives.
But an even more profound contrast is in the third part of that troika, the "pursuit of happiness": Thomas Jefferson, for all of his subsequent small-government politics, did not choose to contemplate the rights of humanity as simply a lack of interference from explicit governments, but as positive qualities that exist on all levels as intrinsic properties of personhood. It is possible for private entities to obstruct a person's freedom, and further possible for pursuit of happiness by individuals to become impractical in the absence of cooperative efforts and democratically-mandated reforms that mitigate the predatory behavior of the few upon the many (and vice-versa). For a nation of rural farmers who own their own land, such considerations are not very significant, but when people must increasingly live in close proximity to one another and have detailed economic interactions on a daily basis just to make a living, the power of the wealthy individual or private interest to dominate and oppress the citizenry grows vast and requires legal mitigation to maintain the fundamental rights of the human being identified here: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Pursuit of happiness is a pretty straightforward proposition when almost all of the people are agrarian and - notwithstanding the diffuse presence of indigenous populations - the vast majority of land in a huge and bountiful continent is unpopulated. When the unclaimed land in a given area runs out or the politics becomes too Byzantine, just take a canoe, or steamboat, or covered wagon further out and start fresh - if you want company, only go a moderate distance to burgeoning frontier towns; if you're really antisocial, go past them and set up a farm out in the middle of nowhere and hope you avoid trouble. This worked for a very long time: People who felt their freedom was being cramped and opportunities drying up could just pull up stakes and take their chances, and they had a (historically relative) decent possibility of finding unoccupied land that would support them.
But sooner or later, frontiers end - at least the ones on this planet, which ordinary people could reach by just making the choice and taking a risk. States in this country that cling to a cargo cult fantasy of the frontier long past its reality are not open places with real opportunities like an actual frontier; there is no freedom to be had there, and no untouched bounty to realize; they're underdeveloped, relatively impoverished places where a handful of ultra-wealthy parasites rule over the lives of everyone else and deny them any legal or social recourse to change things for the better. There is no pursuit of happiness in Wingnuttistan - you do what you're told and accept the treatment meted out to you or your family starves, and if you prove too troublesome even then, you end up in a privatized prison, sentenced by a privatized judge, where you are forced to perform even harder work for even less (or no) compensation whatsoever. This is what Republicans consider "freedom" and "opportunity" - their freedom to enslave you, and your total lack of opportunity to stop them.
To pursue happiness with fixed resources not constantly being reinforced with frontier development requires cooperation and democratic mitigation of the predatory behavior of private actors. It requires progressive taxation, social safety nets, public education, taxation to account for economic externalities (for instance, pollution), worker rights, civil rights enforcement, and pretty much the entire gamut of public-sector activity that Republicans oppose. In the 21st century, the pursuit of happiness is not practical without these measures being permitted to function, and constant Republican sabotage, interference, and violent resistance to the right of the people to democratically enact such measures just illustrates how fundamentally opposed they are to the core concepts of our republic. They don't even really see themselves as Americans anymore, but simply as "consumers" of convenient identity politics: They wave flags when waving flags makes people do what they're told, but the moment it ceases to be useful to them, they will relocate their business to some despotic gangster-state or even renounce their citizenship to avoid paying taxes.
Basically, they (modern US conservatives) as a people have never been on board with the basic concepts of democracy - they don't even agree with Winston Churchill's pragmatic statement that it's the worst system except for all the others. Quite simply, they are against it. Period. People like them who came to this country in past eras did so out of greed, misanthropy, or to avoid having the consequences of their actions in their native countries catch up with them. They came here not to escape oppression, but replace someone else's oppressive dominion with their own. They came here because the natives and more legitimately-motivated immigrants were easier to con, steal from, or murder than their neighbors in Europe, and they set up one of history's nightmare societies in the colonies beneath the Mason-Dixon line - the Southern slaveocracy: The reincarnation of Spartan terrorism and blood ideology spread across a territory the size of Western Europe. .
Back on the subject of American independence, these people constantly portray it as a fight against taxation - which they know isn't true, but they wish it were. The Founders were fighting against the lack of democracy - the refusal of the Crown to grant Americans a seat in parliament. The fact that colonials were being taxed without having a voice in the matter was simply insult piled on injury - taxation was not the problem, but the lack of representation in the establishment of those taxes. No Republican can argue legitimately that they lack representation - if anything they wield far more power than their numbers, let alone what is justified by the few arguments they ever bother to offer rather than just buying or stealing power. It's democracy itself that they loathe - the very idea that people can compel them to contribute back to the nation that makes their privilege possible is offensive to their malignant narcissism. They literally believe they are superhuman because they were born rich or know some tricks to make other people give them money.
And they certainly aren't opposed to monarchy or arbitrary rule by force - hell, those are probably the ultimate expressions of Republican ideology, as indicated by their otherwise inexplicably chummy relationship with Saudi Arabia. Tons of other countries sell us oil, and tons of other countries have strategic military alliances with us, but Republicans seem to have a deep spiritual connection to the blood-soaked, hellishly unequal feudal horror and religious fanatic culture of Saudi Arabia. They certainly look more kindly on it than on fellow democracies like France, Britain, and Canada. Under the George W. Bush regime, what passed for a US government was essentially surrounded by an "alliance" of tyrannical rogue states while the democracies of the world were being constantly assailed and retaliated against with crazed, shoe-banging invectives from Republicans in Washington.
Now that I've laid that groundwork, I'll speed things up a bit by having brief quotes followed by equally brief paraphrasings illustrating the modern analogy as contrasted with Republican propaganda:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men
Governments are instituted to actively protect rights, not to avoid interacting with people as much as possible.
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
Government legitimacy comes from the consent of the citizenry, not from the money of the financially interested.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
When governments become corrupt and no longer guarantee the inherent rights identified above, the people have a right to elect someone else or, barring that, revolt.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes
In other words, patriots don't call for revolution because they want a tax cut to pay for a new jacuzzi, or because they can't stand seeing a black face in the White House. There have to actually be sane reasons that are completely beyond the power of ordinary political processes to deal with.
and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
This much, at least, Republicans count on.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Republicans believe the reverse: That when a long train of beneficial services and protections of rights, evinces a design to enforce the equality and freedom of the citizenry despite Republican lust for power, it is the conservative right to throw off such Gubmint and then replace it with nothing except for those who can afford private services - i.e., themselves.
[The King of Britain] has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
Hmm, obstruction of obviously good, necessary, beneficial laws...who does that sound like?
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
Neglect of urgent matters of state to pursue private frivolities. Sounds like the last three Republicans to have occupied the White House.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
Holds the public good hostage and demands limitations on the representation of large numbers of people. Very familiar.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
Cheap tactics to sabotage the legislative process. Yup.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.
Scott Walker probably wishes he had that authority - not that lacking it has ever stopped him from doing something.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
Imposing a destructive state of paralysis on elected authorities to avoid the people's will and interest to be served. This list of grievances against George III is practically a Republican political training manual - except, of course, George III wasn't a mass-murdering psychopath full of hatred for all of mankind and they are.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He opposed immigration to America to avoid threats to his political power. Interesting.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
Blocks appointment of judges.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
Politicizes the judiciary.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
Hello Super-PACs and front corporations.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
Hey, suburban police departments totally need rocket launchers and APCs! Dennis the Menace might acquire nuclear weapons.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
No one will ever accuse Republicans of trying to hold the military accountable.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
E.g., subordinating elected bodies to the will of private actors, interests, and hostile foreign governments like China who have business relationships with them.
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
This one we've dodged in modern times, although one could argue that using eminent domain to redistribute property from ordinary citizens to benefit private corporations is even more egregious. And, of course, forcing women to be pregnant is kind of similar.
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
Wow, the British Empire actually put murderers among them on trial? That's more accountability than a Republican has ever accepted.
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
Republicans don't cut off our trade, they just make sure we hemmorhage money to China because they get a cut of the action.
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
Republicans overwhelmingly make money by externalizing their costs on to the public and privatizing the benefits of public expenditures so that no one else can benefit. That isn't merely taxation without representation, but outright thievery.
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
Such as forcing employees and customers to agree to private arbitration, seizing and withholding property indefinitely, and of course creating gulags for suspected terrorists - gulags they explicitly propose using to imprison Americans without trial.
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
Shocking historical symmetries here.
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
Manipulating foreign politics to more easily oppress people at home. Yup.
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
Such as city manager laws that impose local dictatorships unapproved by voters, ignoring Constitutions on both the state and federal level, and replacing them with arbitrary "laws" made up out of wholecloth by the will of rulers. According to Republicans, a human being has no rights, but a corporation has infinite rights.
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
Yup.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
Which Republicans have done for decades.
He has plundered our seas
Off-shore drilling.
ravaged our coasts
Oil spills from off-shore drilling.
burnt our towns
Evisceration of fire departments to pay for tax cuts for rich people.
and destroyed the lives of our people.
Republicans have done and continue to do this in too many ways to count.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
Eight years of the Bush regime summed up in a single paragraph from two centuries earlier, and very likely a prognostication of the very next Republican to hold the White House.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
Not quite applicable to modern times, although there is some limited analogy in the non-existence of economic opportunities in so many parts of the country other than being prison guards.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Okay, have to give a bit of leeway to the different perspectives of two centuries of history, but I don't think it's difficult to see the analogy: Divide & conquer strategy, incitement of angry foreign elements to attack us (honestly, Bush all but put up a sign begging for another 9/11 - too bad for him most Americans in law enforcement and intelligence didn't want to see their country harmed further).
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
We kept trying to reason with them and ask for compromise, but they just take it as a sign of weakness and behave even more egregiously. Republicans to a tee.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
Appeals to common heritage and culture fall on deaf ears. We were nothing more than recalcitrant servants to them, and the new economic possibilities the people were making possible were being treated as the property of distant, unaccountable elites who had no obligations in return. Sounds very familiar.
In the concluding paragraph, the Declaration explicitly pronounces the separation from Great Britain and the sovereignty of the United States, but the finale is most interesting:
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Mutually pledge our lives,
fortunes, and honor. Granted, this probably uses the word in both the sense of "destiny" as well as economic prosperity, but when was the last time a Republican even pretended to have a financial obligation to this country? They will not even sacrifice money for what they demand others sacrifice their lives to protect, if they can get away with refusing to do so, and they portray any expectation that they would make such a sacrifice as some kind of heinous affront to their liberty.
In fact, they openly claim this country owes them for the privilege of supporting their luxurious existence, and demand public subsidies for their outsourcing of jobs that bleeds and weakens us while further enriching them at our expense. Republicans aren't just un-American, they're not American at all. They're people who feed on others and destroy everything around them no matter where they are or what national chameleon colors they cloak their malice in. They think they are entitled to more than they have no matter how much they already have, who actually deserves credit for their having it, or how little they give back; and think they are above all moral and ethical obligations, while others have no value to them apart from how convenient they are found to be. This country means absolutely nothing to do them - America is their prey, not their country. And it's about time we fought back.
1:37 AM PT: Why the hell does the system list more comments than I see? I have TU status, so I should be able to see even hidden comments.