North Star Writers Group

In recent days, having seen the absurd and obscene lengths to which politicians will go to control every last bit of our lives, I could not help but be drawn back to the Declaration of Independence. It purportedly is still the founding document of our nation, an expression of the fundamental principles by which we ostensibly live our lives. Yet I don't think its author, Thomas Jefferson, would recognize the country for which he wrote his eloquent proclamation, and which was built upon it. Certainly he could not imagine that it would ever have a government so large, expensive and intrusive as we now do after he and his fellow Founding Fathers fought to become free from precisely that in the form of King George III of England.

But here we are nevertheless, with a far higher level of taxation on more things than George ever considered, much less attempted to implement. And a willingness to presume a level of interference in the daily lives of people that goes beyond what George was capable of (if only because he was 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean and had only so many Redcoats here to enforce his whims). I don't think even he would have tried to dictate the type of wax candles with which people had to illuminate their homes – as politicians today try to ban incandescent light bulbs. Or established an "energy policy" of prohibiting the cutting down of trees to burn for heat and riding horses in the name of environmental correctness – as politicians today place all domestic oil off-limits and hinder car driving every way they can in the name of "global warming."

And George absolutely would not have been hell-bent on surrendering the world's most powerful military to an Islamic enemy [the Barbary Pirates] - as politicians today openly try to make the world's lone superpower lie submissively supine for Al Qaeda. (By the way, Jefferson himself as president sent American forces to fight the Barbary Pirates without an official declaration of war. The Marines were created as a result. So President Bush has one hell of a good precedent.)

So I ask you: Have we reached the point where the previously unthinkable has become thinkable? Or even actionable? Read the following excerpt from the Declaration and tell me if you can that it couldn't possibly apply today: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [securing unalienable Creator-endowed rights], 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."

Can it really be argued that government today isn't destructive of unalienable rights? Just ask any bar or restaurant owner, whose private property rights have been utterly annihilated. His choice of clientele (smoking bans), menu offerings (trans-fat bans), and everything else is being dictated to him by today's version of King George. As Ronald Reagan correctly pointed out, "What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property?"

Oh, but that's not enough to justify such a drastic move, you say. The very next sentence of the Declaration addresses that head-on: "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."

I'm hard-pressed to find a more fitting description of today. The only difference is that where a two-cent tea tax wasn't sufferable for Bostonians of the 1770s, much higher income, property and sales taxes are sufferable for all Americans of the 2000s. (I only hope that has more to do with America being financially better off today than today's Americans being less willing to stand up and fight.) But the principle is the same. You could even argue that quartering troops in private homes could apply, since that would be the only way to actually enforce some of the insanity lawmakers pass - banning parental spanking or light bulbs, for instance.

Clearly, not even the Founders thought that such a move should be anything but a last resort. Nor am I arguing otherwise - merely that we are much further down that road than most would want to believe or care to admit. And note the last clause – it is not just our right but our duty to throw off government that behaves in such intentionally despotic fashion. Therefore, this is not something we can simply duck because it is too imposing or inconvenient for our comfort.

The Founders waged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to begin this experiment in self-government, which continues to this very day – an act considered unthinkable in their day. If we are to keep the experiment alive and be worthy of the Founders' sacrifice, we too must be willing to think and do the previously unthinkable. And so the question remains:

Have we reached that point?

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This is Column # DKK49. Request permission to publish here.