May God continue to pour out his Blessings upon the greatest nation on Earth, and my He also protect us from those who would take all of this away from us:




Text:

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

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.

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 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; 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. 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.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
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.
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.
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.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
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.
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 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 harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
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:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
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:
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, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
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.
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.
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.

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.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish 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.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. 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.

Connecticut:
Samuel Huntington
Roger Sherman
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

Delaware:
Thomas McKean
George Read
Caesar Rodney

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Maryland:
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone

Massachusetts:
John Adams
Samuel Adams
John Hancock
Elbridge Gerry
Robert Treat Paine

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
Matthew Thornton
William Whipple

New Jersey:
Abraham Clark
John Hart
Francis Hopkinson
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon

New York:
William Floyd
Francis Lewis
Philip Livingston
Lewis Morris

North Carolina:
Joseph Hewes
William Hooper
John Penn

Pennsylvania:
George Clymer
Robert Morris
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Ross
Benjamin Rush
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson

Rhode Island:
William Ellery
Stephen Hopkins

South Carolina:
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
Edward Rutledge

Virginia:
Carter Braxton
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Jefferson
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
George Wythe

It scares the hell out of me when I hear the likes of John Edwards bemoan that the War on Terror is merely a Bumper Sticker, I have to ask myself the following:

a) Did the patrons at Tygrr, Tygrr feel that way?
b) Do Londoners feel that way when another car was found to have been located?
c) How about those at the Glasgow Airport, with the flames dancing around them, and some nutjob running with a gas cylinder? (Dr.'s, no less, hmmm...disaffected youth, poor people are the ones we have to be afraid of, right?)

But then something comes across my computer screen that frightens me even more.  Michael Yon has a dispatch from Iraq that should curl every American's toes (Bless the Beasts and Children), especially at a time when we can sit back in our LaZ Boy's and get ready for the Fourth of July.  We celebrate our Freedom and Liberty, and our men and women are fighting for the Iraqi people to have the same and PROTECT us as well.  Frightening is not the word, when men, women and children are not merely killed, but beheaded.  Children beheaded, women's feet cut off.  I weep for the village outside of Baqubah, the pictures are gruesome, and the article well worth the read.  Please, encourage everyone you know to read it, and pass it on.  If we let the Dimocrats, and Michael Moore/Rosie O'Donnell liberals take over the direction of the War on Terror, if we lose in Iraq, we will face a determined enemy who will not stop at car bombs...

 The Liberals are screaming now...do any of them remember Marc Rich?  Poor Dimocrats, Sen. Majority Leader 'I Never Met A Land Deal I Didn't Make Money On' Reid cried... the Dimocratic Underground is aroused into fury (well, nothing new there) cries of IMPEACH THE IMP...Sen. Schumer is wanting to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, One Dimocratic sentence commuted per Republican...

So, regardless that NO CRIME that the Special Prosecutor was put in place to find, and that the S.P knew who the leaker was on DAY ONE (okay, okay, it wasn't day one, but darn near close enough).  President Bush also made it clear that he understood that the jury found Libby lied, and he should be punished for it (loss of law license, loss of $$$$, and 2 year probation) but that Libby had also served his country in a time of great need, and admirably.

Oh, I love the screeching on the left today...maybe they can parlay that into a radio channel on the AM band, oh wait they tried that and Air America went bankrupt...

 IN CONGRESS, July 2, 1776.


The unanimous Resolution of the thirteen united
States of America


Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. (Hattip: Vexillarium)

And this from Michael Medved:

HAPPY SECOND OF JULY!

On July 2, 1776, after long and wrenching debate, the Continental Congress voted to declare independence from the Mother Country and the next night John Adams went back to his rooming house in sweltering, sticky Philadelphia to write, by candlelight, perhaps the most famous letter in American history. Addressing his beloved wife Abigail in far-away Boston, he exulted in the birth of a new nation:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means. And that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not...

It may be the will of Heaven that America will suffer calamities still more wasting, and distress yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have this good effect at least. It will inspire us with many virtues which we have not, and correct many errors, follies and vices which threaten to disturb, dishonor and destroy us. The furnace of afflication produces refinement, in States as well as individuals...But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.

The prophetic nature of his vision still makes the heart race and takes the breath away, some 231 years later. Predicting "illuminations" (the 18th Century term for fireworks!) to celebrate Independence Day from "one end of the continent to the other" remains almost freakishly prescient. When Adams wrote those words, the colonies occupied only a narrow, intermittent strip of settlements along the eastern seaboard; the very notion of a true continental nation looked wildly implausible, all but unimaginable.

The one mistake in Adams' view of the future involved his assumption that future generations would celebrate the Second of July (the date of the adoption of the resolution for Independence) rather than the Fourth of July (the date Congress approved the specific wording of the Declaration which Adams had helped his friend Thomas Jefferson to write.

In any event, those who insist on dismissing or denying the nation's deeply religious heritage should ponder the words of this "Atlas of Independence." Adams expects that we will celebrate the nation's founding through "solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty" (don't tell the ACLU!). After bitter, exhausting political battles in Philadelphia (corresponding to simultaneous -disastrous- military battles conducted by Washington's army in New York) he recognized the role of Providence in the ongoing struggle and, at a moment of exultation, proved himself not just a far-seeing leader, but a prophet.

May we celebrate our nation's beginning in a manner worthy of such founders.

Happy Independence Day!

May God continue to pour out His Blessings upon this great nation!  May He also protect us from a gathering storm, a storm the likes of which we have never seen.  No, not because of Global Warming (the greatest threat that the left sees on the horizon) but, one created by evil, of the Devil himself.  Evil men who wish to destroy this nation and subjugate women, destroy our economy, and kill any who are believers in Christ, and any who do not convert at the point of the sword, or the explosion of the VIED.  It is coming, the storm is working it's way West, London, Glasgow...how long before it is Los Angeles, Seattle, D.C., Las Vegas, Dallas.  Will it be a crowded airport, a place where many gather after work on a Friday a nightclub, a mall that our teenagers gather to just be teenagers? 

Please pray for an awakening, that people of America will open their eyes before it is too late.  That those who would attack our Freedoms and Liberty will be not just understood, but crushed before they inflict death.