{"id":6775,"date":"2013-07-07T11:29:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-07T11:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=6775"},"modified":"2013-07-07T11:30:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-07T11:30:02","slug":"independence-and-the-declaration-of-secession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=6775","title":{"rendered":"Independence and the Declaration of Secession"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ilana<\/a>
Ilana Mercer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

by Ilana Mercer<\/p>\n

\u201cTea party,\u201d \u201cpatriot,\u201d \u201cConstitution\u201d and \u201cBill of Rights\u201d: these keywords are the very stuff of the American Revolution, which took place during the last half of the 18th century. They are also some of the words that cued the \u201cInfernal Revenue Service\u201d<\/a> to target the philosophical descendants of the Revolutionaries, in 21st century America.<\/p>\n

Had they been aware that in 2012 not all Americans are created equal, the targeted not-for-profit organizations, aiming to fly beneath the IRS radar, would have also avoided any references to \u201cThe Declaration of Independence,\u201d whose proclamation, on July 4, 1776, we celebrate as Independence Day.<\/p>\n

Ordinary Americans of a certain age are already in compliance with the anti-American program carried out by their government, Democratic or Republican. Having been conditioned by our country\u2019s many Orwellian Ministries of Truth,<\/a> they celebrate July 4th firecrackers, fire-sale prices and cookouts. The Declaration doesn\u2019t feature. As this column once remarked, contemporary Americans are less likely to read the Declaration of Independence now that it is easily available on the Internet, than when it relied on horseback riders for its distribution.<\/p>\n

Back in 1776, gallopers carried the Declaration through the country. As historian David Hackett Fischer recounted in \u201cLiberty and Freedom,\u201d printer John Dunlap had worked \u201cthrough the night\u201d to set the full text on \u201ca handsome folio sheet.\u201d And John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, urged that the \u201cpeople be universally informed.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so the people were.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the beginning,\u201d wrote James McClellan, \u201cAmerican Constitution-makers had the general support of their countrymen. The principles of government they espoused during the Revolution and implemented after the British surrender at Yorktown were widely shared in every town and village. It was on the basis of this remarkable consensus, this serene moment of creation, this fertile ground of American political experience, that the new Constitution was established.\u201d (page 59)<\/p>\n

The excerpt is from McClellan\u2019s magisterial \u201cLiberty, Order, And Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government,\u201d published by Liberty Fund<\/a>. Like many of this country\u2019s greatest patriots, McClellan wrote from a farm in Virginia.<\/p>\n

While Mark Levin, the radio man lauded by his Republican adherents as \u201cThe Great One,\u201d has denounced the secessionists among us (check), McClellan (a real scholar) seconded the Declaration\u2019s secessionist impetus. The Declaration\u2019s first part, he argued, \u201coffered a philosophical justification for secession, based on the theory that all men are entitled to basic rights, that the purpose of government is to protect those rights, and that the people have the right to abolish that government if it fails to fulfill its obligation.\u201d (page 122)<\/p>\n

The provision of the Declaration of Independence that has aroused the greatest controversy is Thomas Jefferson\u2019s statement \u201cthat all men are created equal. This was a poor choice of words,\u201d admits McClellan, for \u201cneither Jefferson nor any other members of the Continental Congress seriously believed that all people are equal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNor could Jefferson have possibly had in mind the \u201ctype of \u2018\u00e9galit\u00e9\u2019 proclaimed by the French revolutionaries a decade later \u2013 that is, a radical leveling of society to a common stratum through government imposition of political, social, and economic equality.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to McClellan, the florid phrase \u201call men are created equal\u201d meant only that \u201cthe American people, as a nation, were entitled to the same rights as Englishmen.\u201d This demand for equal rights is the main thrust of the Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n

Order lIana Mercer\u2019s brilliant polemical work, \u201cInto the Cannibal\u2019s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSome forms of equality,\u201d explained McClellan, \u201care clearly compatible with individual liberty, equality before the law or equal rights being the most obvious. \u2026 These forms of equality are generally consistent with the ideal of individual liberty because they may be attained without coercion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial and economic equality, on the other hand, finds no support in the Constitution or in the political tradition that grew out of the Declaration of Independence. \u2026 To reduce the entire American population to a single class of people, devoid of all social and economic distinctions, would have required massive and interminable coercion, resulting in a loss of individual liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such \u201cdrastic measures\u201d drove the Jacobin French Revolution. \u201cThey were never contemplated by those who wrote and approved the founding documents.\u201d (page 136)<\/p>\n

With the Declaration of Independence, the colonists were advancing a constitutional argument whereby Americans would be \u201centitled to the rights of Englishmen\u201d: \u201cthe right to trial by jury, the right to self-government, the right of taxation by consent, and the right against quartering troops in private household. Theirs was a philosophical appeal resting on the claim of equal rights and the republican principles of government by consent.\u201d (page 137)<\/p>\n

The tenet of equality before the law served as a catalyst for the anti-slavery movement. Equally and justifiably is the preamble invoked \u201cto support secession, the theory being that the States in 1861, as in 1776, had a fundamental or natural right to \u2018change their form of government and institute a new [or no] government whenever necessary for their safety and happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly \u2013 and as the existence of the IRS, an agency devoted to legalized thuggery attests \u2013 what remains of the sublime ideals \u201cshared in every town and village\u201d in early America is a deracinated, fragmented and demoralized people, managed to their detriment by a despotic State.<\/p>\n

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, called it \u201can expression of the American Mind.\u201d Judging from their enemy lists, unceasing evil and dark schemes, IRS apparatchiks and their masters in government consider the Declaration an expression of a subversive American mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ilana Mercer \u201cTea party,\u201d \u201cpatriot,\u201d \u201cConstitution\u201d and \u201cBill of Rights\u201d: these keywords are the very stuff of the American Revolution, which took place during the last half of the 18th century. They are also some of the words that cued the \u201cInfernal Revenue Service\u201d to target the philosophical descendants of the Revolutionaries, in 21st … Continue reading “Independence and the Declaration of Secession”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,80],"tags":[3750,3749,3751,3752,3748,3747,12251],"class_list":["post-6775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-ilana-mercer","tag-bill-of-rights","tag-constitution","tag-david-hackett-fischer","tag-mark-levin","tag-patriot","tag-tea-party","tag-united-states"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Ilana_Mercer_s640x427.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6775"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6778,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6775\/revisions\/6778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}