July 4, 2023: Declaration’s Key Phrase: “Free and Independent States”
Conservatives and libertarians still like to celebrate Independence Day, while grousing about how today’s U.S. government is multiples larger than that of King George III, tyrant. But liberals nowadays, despite controlling most of the levers of power, especially the presidency, use the occasion to condemn the Declaration of Independence and everything that followed. Here’s George Skelton in the Los Angeles Times, columnist there for five decades:
little resemblance to real life… slaves… Slavery continued…women…not allowed to vote … Native Americans were butchered…Chinese… “exclusion acts”… barred Japanese immigrants from owning property… Housing discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion… far-right court that was shaped by Donald Trump…
What a hellhole. Why does anyone even live in America? Why isn’t everybody leaving? Should Pol Pot be called in to create a 100% equal society?
America has the world’s worst school system. About the only phrase kids get these days from the Declaration of Independence is, “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’s used as an excuse to impose massive intervention into all parts of our lives.
But here’s the key phrase:
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.
Note: “Free and Independent” is used twice and “Independent States” once more. And “sacred Honor” was something that meant everything to the Founders.
When the South seceded in 1861, they cited this part of the Declaration as justification for their own independence. Of course, nowadays 99% of students in the North and 90% in the South are taught the Civil War was about slavery and only slavery, not the many other reasons cited in “The Causes of the Civil War,” edited by Kenneth M. Stamp, himself not a Southern sympathizer. Main other reasons were high tariffs that hit the South most and differences going back to the English Civil War, with Roundheads-Puritans migrating to the North and becoming Yankees, vs. Cavaliers migrating South and becoming Rebels.
But let’s just go with what most Americans believe: The Civil War was about slavery. Why, slavery was abolished 158 year ago with the 13th Amendment.
Which means, if a state or states were to secede today, citing the Declaration, they couldn’t be accused of wanting to maintain an institution that no longer exists. That especially would be true of Union States that had abolished slavery before the war started, such as California and New England, the main loci of current separationist sentiment. There even is a Calexit movement, named after Britain’s Brexit movement. Actual motto: “National Divorce starts in California.”
I don’t think state independence movements will start until Social Security and Medicare go broke, maybe in 20 years. Until then oldsters like me will insist we get “our fair share” of what we paid in, and vote to keep the Union intact. Actually, right now I’m still paying in more in taxes than I’m taking out in benefits. But the first heart attack – my father suffered three until the last one got him at 90 – will soak the system pretty hard.
Which is why, even though I have written maybe 100 editorials calling for privatizing Social Security and Medicare – nobody listened! – I want the system to continue. But when it’s gone, well, then what use is the federal system to me except as an oppressor of my liberties, a global buttinski now risking nuclear war over a line on some map of Eastern Europe and a destroyer of the legacy of this country that – whatever Skelton and others whine about – was mostly noble and glorious?
When that day of separation comes, let no one lament it. As the Declaration itself says:
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren…. 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.
Let us make the next Separation of “Free and Independent States,” this time 50 of them, “in Peace Friends.”