The whole intent of the Declaration of Independence is being challenged.
Two hundred and forty years ago, men who represented those that had become increasingly distressed at the imposition of overbearing laws that ignored traditional rights gathered, and at great and immediate peril, broke from the most powerful empire on Earth, declaring their move to develop a new nation “With a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
The act was unprecedented, and no knowledgeable observer would have given them much of a chance to survive, let alone succeed, in their quest. Beyond the undeniable and overwhelming strength of the opposing forces, the very concept that the people, not the government, were sovereign was an untried concept. Nevertheless, their Declaration of Independence boldly stated:
“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.”
Those intrepid founders braved the odds, ignored the experts, and established what eventually became the most powerful nation on the planet. There were major challenges along the way. It took over a century to include those of a different color in those “unalienable rights,” at the cost of the bloodiest war the nation has ever fought. It took even more time to include women.
But that founding concept of “unalienable rights” of individual citizens has come under relentless attack in recent years. The prevailing concept, heralded by a self-proclaimed elite in the realms of the bulk of the mass media, academia, and at least half the political spectrum is that citizens only have what rights the current federal government deigns to provide. No less a figure than a United States Supreme Court judge, Elena Kagan, refused to acknowledge that citizens have those “unalienable rights.”
The Declaration noted that King George III “has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained.” In the 21st Century, many state laws seeking to ensure honest and fair elections through accurate voter registration rolls and voter ID requirements have been blocked by an excessively powerful federal government.
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Thomas Jefferson’s great document pointed out that the monarch “has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” Currently, a vast, unelected and unresponsive Washington bureaucracy, seemingly immune to the people’s oversight, under various excuses and without the permission of appropriately enacted legislation, regulates almost every activity Americans engage in.
The Declaration pointed out that the King “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.” President Obama has sought to override domestic control in areas such as internet use, trade, and environmental protection through a variety of international “agreements,” which are in reality treaties, which he has refused, in defiance of Constitutional procedure, to place before the Senate for approval.
Vital rights have been enshrined in the Constitution, written in the decade following Independence, but they are under consistent attack.
The First Amendment provides freedom of speech. One-half of the membership of the Federal Communications Commission has repeatedly attempted to limit that right over the past seven and one-half years. The Federal Elections Commission and the Internal Revenue Service have been used as weapons to attack dissenting voices. U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) introduced legislation to limit the First Amendment. Universities consistently seek to penalize conservative students.
The Second Amendment provided that the right of the people to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” In repeated cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, the right of individuals to do just that has been verified. Despite that, the left of the political spectrum tirelessly seeks to ignore both the Constitution and the Court.
The Ninth Amendment ensures that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The Tenth Amendment expands on that, specifically guaranteeing that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The concept of unalienable rights and the production of a Bill of Rights were an evolution in human thought and practice. In this past decade, however, that idea and practice is imperiled more than they have been at any time since the heroes of Philadelphia and the Continental Army stood tall against desperate odds.