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David
Karki
Read David's bio and previous columns here
July 8, 2009
The Last
Independence Day?
Last weekend many of us
celebrated the 233rd anniversary of the passage of the
Declaration of Independence, the profound document stating the timeless
principles upon which our nation is founded and our lifestyle depends.
Thomas Jefferson's words still ring as true today as they did in 1776:
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.
Perhaps they resonate
so freshly because now, as then, we are faced with someone who views the
Declaration as well as the Constitution which is the legal
codification of the above principles as something to be disdained and
disregarded. To the extent the founding documents are acknowledged, it's
as an annoying obstacle to be gotten over and around in the pursuit of
power and the forcible implementation of a different worldview, not as
hard limits on government power, which must be respected for the sake of
the liberty of us all.
Example: The House's
ramrod passage of the cap and tax bill, which is nothing less than
outright totalitarianism thinly disguised in a cloak of environmentalism
as if government could ever possibly affect the climate or weather
anyway.
Example: The Obama
Administration's despicable support of one authoritarian dictator after
another Iran, Honduras, Venezuela, etc. when the people of those
nations want no part of them.
The Iranian people took
to the streets after a blatantly stolen election, heroically putting
their lives on the line in hopes that someone might help them take down
the world's worst regime before it obtained nuclear weapons. They bled
and died for freedom, and should have been an inspiration to us all. But
sadly, Obama is allied with the other side.
In Honduras, President
Manuel Zelaya was term-limited out of office, but illegally tried to
stay beyond that. Their Supreme Court ruled him out of line and their
military forced him to leave. Naturally, Obama took the side of the
blatantly despotic Zelaya, and the state-run media reported this as a
coup, when it was simply the enforcement of Article 374 of the
Honduran constitution. There, as here, the military takes an oath to
uphold the document against all enemies, foreign and domestic. They
don't swear loyalty to a person. And we've all just seen the good reason
why.
Moreover, the president
who ran his mouth during the election about how much President Bush had
supposedly hurt America's image abroad has managed to infuriate the
populations of both Iran and Honduras by being on the wrong side of both
situations. Far from building friendships, he's needlessly and stupidly
creating enmity by supporting these thugs.
Why would Obama so
consistently find kinship with the likes of Zelaya, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
Hugo Chavez and so on? Could it be that he harbors similar desires here,
for us? Could it be that he can't very well support peoples wanting
freedom abroad when he's simultaneously trying to remove ours here at
home as evidenced by the cap and tax and health care bills, both of
which would utterly annihilate the private sector and individual
freedom?
I certainly hope we
don't have to repeat the events that followed the passage of the
Declaration, but the main way to avoid it is constant vigilance. And I
fear that having been a bit soft in that regard has opened the door to a
repetition being much more likely than it was just a few months ago.
Clearly, there is much in the way Obama is behaving to give those of us
who still value what the Declaration embodies and let's not fool
ourselves into thinking that there are as many with such a mindset as
there once were reason for great pause.
I hope you enjoyed the
barbecues and fireworks, but keep in mind what it will take to keep
commemorating Independence Day in the years to come, and not have it be
turned into Dependence Day.
© 2009
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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