Branding, framing, staying on message, or defining - whatever you want to call it these days, the Democratic Party has long stuggled to really reach the people with their message and to motivate people to care. Too often we get so hung up in the nit-picky issues of today that we really miss the boat when it comes to really defining what America should be about these days, or why we are within our right to oppose this administration. Here is my suggestion, take a 5 minute history lesson and read the
Declaration of Independence all over again. You would be surprised at what jumps out at you and how the violations of King George of yesteryear is the almost the same as the ones of this George today.
Let's begin here with the second verse:
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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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. -- Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
More here:
* He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
* He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
* He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
* He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
* He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people , and eat out their substance.
* He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
* For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
* For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
* For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
* For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
* For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
* For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
* He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
* He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
* He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.
* 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.
Sound familiar?
These are just a few highlights from 1776 and these same assertions can be substantiated today.
We cannot do much about King George until 2008 but the company he keeps must go now.
America, we must learn from history, embrace it, and move the people to make a difference in 2006 and not continue to make the same mistakes.
This is our duty. This is our right. This is our message.
