This July 4, there is much to celebrate, with the economy, world peace and Supreme Court nominations looking good, but there is also a lot to keep battling for, such as better race relations, border security and fair news coverage among them.
We are it seems, in a constant state of war for independence; independence from harassment, fake news and un-American activities.
Democracies are messy (and please, no nonsense here about the United States of America not being a democracy, but a Constitutional Republic. The two things are not mutually exclusive. That’s a semantic argument, not a substantive one.). Democracies sometimes fight themselves, but all should be in an effort to improve the QUALITY of our little experiment.
During times of war (and we ARE in a Global War on Terror), there are two acts for which there can be no forgiveness and no quarter; they are sedition and invasion.
During the Revolutionary War traitors were hung or shot on the battlefield. Bowe Bergdahl would not have lasted two seconds had he been retrieved from his desertion back then.
After signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin stated that “If we do not hang together we shall certainly hang separately.” He was not kidding or using hyperbole.
When the 56 Signers of The Declaration of Independence attached their signatures to that document, each knew they were committing treason against the British Crown. If caught and captured, they risked death. But death would not be swift. It would be by hanging to the point of unconsciousness, then being revived, disemboweled, their body parts boiled in oil and their ashes scattered into the wind. Our Founding Fathers valued freedom, for themselves and their posterity (us), to the extent that they found this fate worth the risk.
Five signers were captured by the British and brutally tortured as traitors. Nine fought in the War for Independence and died from wounds or from hardships they suffered. Two lost their sons in the Continental Army. Another two had sons captured. At least a dozen of the 56 had their homes pillaged and burned.
What kind of men were they? Twenty-five were lawyers or jurists. Eleven were merchants. Nine were farmers or large plantation owners. One was a teacher, one a musician, and one a printer. These were men of means and education, yet they signed the Declaration of Independence, knowing full well that the penalty could be death if they were captured.
Today we have manifest treason morphed into sedition (conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of the state) in the form of acts against a duly nominated and then elected president, our democratic election process and our democracy itself.
Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials have broken sacred trust with We the People. They have abused their standing and power in an effort at a soft coup. It is ongoing, but slowly the curtain is being pulled back to reveal yet more disturbing facts than we could have imagined just a few short years ago.
The Deep State has robbed us of our national pride. The Alt-Left have driven divisive pillars all around us in an attempt to corral our patriotism and then destroy it. The Mainstream Media perpetrate divisive propaganda and fake news.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., used the American flag as his symbol for the Civil Rights movement. His dream of Americans judging each other based on our character (our words and deeds) instead of the color of our skin, or origin, or religion, etc., if far from realized.
Having grown up in the 1960’s and 1970’s in Southern California, I can tell you even though things weren’t perfect; there was far less racial vitriol than there is today. Rev. King’s dream was becoming a reality.
Today, Rev. King might say that anyone who would divide us for any reason is UN-American. Rev. King was about loving your neighbor as yourself. He was about togetherness and celebrating similarities.
Americans are generous, benevolent, kind, hardworking, fierce and persistent. We are persistent in our belief that all men (and women) are created equal, but that equality must be protected and preserved by the character of our people. Rights are not given so much as they are earned through citizenship. Opportunity is not a gift; it is a hard-won prize of effort and conviction.
The Justice Department and FBI scandals of today should be met with the same consequence that befell Major John Andre, Benedict Arnold’s accomplice, who was captured and then hung.
In time of invasion or sedition, the President can suspend habeas corpus (legal due process) and have invaders and traitors tried under the rules of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in a military commission.
We are at war (Global War on Terror), and traitors (FBI, DOJ officials) and invaders (unlawful border crossers) abound!
In 1942, during WWII, six of eight German saboteurs were caught dry foot on US soil, were denied habeas corpus, tried by military commission (unanimously approved by the Supreme Court), and then executed by electric chair less than eight weeks after their capture.
What then is the difference between the German saboteurs (who were proven to have the means and intent to kill and to destroy property in the name of the Third Reich, and were found guilty of breaking the Geneva Conventions) and those who illegally cross our borders, or unlawful combatant Islamists who want to kill us being held at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and who still perpetrate deadly terror throughout the world, including on our own soil?
In Boumediene vs. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision (the swing vote and decision written by Justice Kennedy, who has announced he will be retiring from the bench by the end of July), it was mentioned that the US presence at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (Gitmo), was tantamount to “de facto” US territory, which laid the groundwork for detainees to petition for habeas corpus, as if they were on actual US soil.
In the early 1990’s then President Bill Clinton used Guantanamo Bay as a detention center for unlawful immigrants from both Haiti and Cuba. Conditions were harsh, just like they were for the first detainees in the Global War on Terror at Camp X-Ray for three months, until better accommodations at Camp Delta could be built in April of 2002.
If the current law of the land considers Gitmo to be de facto US soil, then there is no bar to sending those accused of sedition and invasion there to await trial by military commission.
Why then is the penalty less, or non-existent for those who now would take away the freedom, independence and liberty fought for and won with the blood of our forbearers and framers?
Now more than ever we must rally to the side of our President, who, despite sometimes unsavory characteristics, has made the pledge of his good name, livelihood and life to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help him, God.
On this Independence Day, please be mindful of your combat veteran neighbors, and be thrifty with your fireworks if you have them. Remember those who helped create this great nation pledged (and some gave) the full measure of their existence so that WE may be entrusted with carrying on with the hard work of preserving this great Union, with all of its pitfalls and tribulations, wonder and beauty, but to see through the fog of war and the false pretenses of un-America activities.
This land is our land, and we need to protect it with the conviction and vigor that motivated the original 56 patriots. This day is for them and for us; it is Independence Day for Patriots. Let’s act like it.
Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay 
The Declaration ends with this statement:
“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.”
This is what is missing today. Our leaders do not live up to the commitment & oaths they take when taking a place in our government. They are not focused on why they were sent there:
“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.”
We the people need to alter what our government has become and take it back to THIS founding document. The focus is always on the Constitution. But the Constitution was derived from the Declaration of Independence. If we would only read this simple, but direct document, our fore fathers are teaching us what to look our for when person(s) rise above the law and want to take hold of our country and take it away from the citizens. It has become destructive We are no longer safe nor happy.
“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 shown, 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. Such has been the patient
sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains
them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present
King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having
in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To
prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
“Men are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by ABOLISHING the forms to which they are accustomed.” This is the state and mindset of people within the United States today. They do no comprehend the peril our country is in (from without and within). In fact, the peril we face from within is far greater than what we face on the world stage.
But each of us as citizens of the United States have a responsibility to our country and fellow countrymen. “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.” By doing this it provides future security and guards our freedom.
This document holds a very special meaning for me. My 5th generation grandfather, William Ellery from Rhode Island, signed the Declaration. In the picture where they are all gathered to sign the document, he is standing on the right side of the doorway. He was a very smart man. But I take very seriously the oath he took to preserve a nation, to pledge their “lives, our Fortunes and
our sacred Honor.” There are only two areas within our country where these pledges are taken seriously, the men and women who serve in our military, police departments, fire dept and first responders. The other is Conservatives & people who still believe in our Constitution.
Our elected officials do not honor their pledges not do they look out for the well-being of our country or its citizens. They are concerned with poll numbers, their contributors, their standing within the govt and how much power they can gain. They are afraid to stand up and tell the truth no matter what it costs them. However, there are a few; a few brave souls who desperately need our support.
If we are to defeat the enemy, Barack Obama, and his movement to take over the United States, we MUST stand together and tell the truth whenever and where ever we can. The cost will be our country if we dont.
While our President, Donald Trump, is doing everything in his power to fight to get our country back, he cannot do it alone.
The “machine/movement” that Barack Obama has started is infiltrating our country like a cancer. He has stolen our children and corrupted their minds with communism, fascism and Islam. He told us in his last inaugural address that he was going to “fundamentally change our country”. He is succeeding. All the unrest, attacks on our children with violence (guns/buses/fire), and the utter corruption we see in our govt within the DOJ, CIA, FBI, HUD, EPA, DOD, IRS, ATF, ICE, DOS, DOT, DHS, HHS ….. there is not a single governmental entity that Obama has not touched. He has filled these areas with his people willing to follow his instructions no matter the consequences. They are in our schools, our law enforcement, our neighborhoods. People who will be called upon at one point or another to fight against what our country stands for.
This is the man our Declaration of Independence has warned about. if only we would seize the meaning of this document and follow its example and the example of those who wrote it.
The people who have fought for our country deserve for us to fight. Starting with the brave men, women and children who fought to give us a free nation; there are those who followed that thought not of their selves but for the lives of their fellow countrymen. Men and women who dedicated their lives, their fortunes and sacred honor. By doing nothing, we dishonor the memory of all they fought for. All the evil they withstood. The brutality put upon them by our enemies; facing death; the loss of a fellow soldier; the solitude and loneliness they endure by being taken away from their families & the country they love; incredible heat, freezing cold, terrible food – sometimes no food, sleeping on the ground or in a foxhole with the rats; being out in the rain or snow for days with no end; not knowing if this week they will die or maybe in the next hour; they miss the holidays, family events and birthdays; clean clothes – sometimes wearing them for days on end because of the battles they are fighting; illness; not being able to tell who the enemy is because even a small child can be used to carry a bomb with which to injure/kill them. no regular work hours; no soft bed or couch to lounge on; no sleeping in on Saturday or Christmas morning. These are all things we take for granted but others have sacrificed so we can be free and safe.
Lets remember them today and honor their sacrifice by thanking them for giving up themselves and preserving our freedom, for giving us safety. But most of all lets stand together against the enemy that would dishonor them by taking from us what they fought so desperately to give us – freedom. Freedom of speech, to carry a weapon to protect ourselves, freedom of religion – not religion that incites hatred and harm to us; all the other freedoms afforded to us by our Constitution.
May God bless you all.
May God bless you and the United States of America! Amen! I should have let you write the piece! Truly a lovely and precise tome. I enjoyed every word of TRUTH. Thank you for sharing that you 5 times great grandfather was a signator to the Declaration of Independence. A proud fact indeed! The closest I could come was a Revolutionary War ancestor who crossed the Delaware River with G. Washington (Jeptha Bartholomew). We must preserve this legacy, and do it the way you suggest. Hooah!
HOOAH!!