Independence 2.0

[Hogeye]

The 4th of July celebrates the signing of the most revolutionary document in American history: The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies. How revolutionary was it? Here is an updated version the Declaration. What do you think?


The Unanimous Declaration of the Fifty Independent States of America

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume full sovereignty and all powers of self-government, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

• that no person should aggress against another, that individuals possess unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and property, these being necessary conditions for human pursuit of happiness,

• that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

• that whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new governments.

After a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object of despotism, it is the people's right, it is their duty, to throw off such a government, and to pursue new means for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these fifty states; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present "United States" government is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having the direct object of spoliation and tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

1. The "US" state has enforced laws violating the rights of the people. It has stolen the people's property by civil asset forfeiture, and imprisoned people for consensual conduct.

2. The "US" has countermanded local law and violated the right of self-governance; it has forbidden local governments to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance.

3. The "US" has raised the plunder rate of taxation to excessive levels, violating the people's right of property and pursuit of happiness.

4. The "US" has entered into foreign entanglements, intrigue, and war. It has endangered the people with blowback from political and military intervention.

5. The "US" has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

6. The "US" has used, in times of peace, repressive means to subdue the citizenry; it has militarized the police and centralized both lawmaking and law enforcement.

7. The "US" has affected to render the executive and military independent of and superior to the civil power. It has imprisoned foreigners domestically and in foreign lands without due process or regard for individual rights or human dignity.

8. The "US" has used propaganda and psychological operations on the people, spied upon them, and despoiled their privacy. It has licensed, regulated, and controlled mass media, and undermined freedom of communication.

9. The "US" has debased its money, and incurred abominable debt both domestic and foreign. It has restricted trade with parts of the world, demanded tariffs, enforced quotas and prohibitions, granted subsidies and contracts to favored firms, and engaged in other gross offenses to commerce and free markets.

10. The "US" is at this time commanding large armies to complete works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun throughout the world, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy a civilized nation.

A government whose every act defines a despotism is unfit to rule, and has no usefulness to a free people. Reform is futile; politicians have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We realize that some will denounce us for this declaration of separation, our secession from the "US" and assertion of local sovereignty, and hold these critics, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We therefore solemnly declare, that these fifty former states of the "US" are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the "United States of America" government, and that all political connection between them and the "US" is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to make laws, keep the peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

Hogeye Bill

[Doug]

We therefore solemnly declare, that these fifty former states of the "US" are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the "United States of America" government, and that all political connection between them and the "US" is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to make laws, keep the peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.
Hogeye Bill

DOUG
This doesn't make any sense. In the case of the 13 colonies, they severed ties with the British crown, which was a political and geographical entity separate from the colonies. In the case of the U.S., the United States government is comprised of the 50 states. That's why it's called the United States. The states are united. Without the states, there is no U.S. Without the colonies, there was still England.

It is a disanalogy.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Hogeye wants each State to be its own nation. Then he can find excuses for subdividing those into city-states and surrounding territory to have border wars over.

[Hogeye]

The American colonies were ruled from a government in London; the USSR was ruled by a government in Moskow; the US is ruled by a government in Washington DC. Doug, there is a difference between a State and the territory over which it claims rulership.

My point with Independence 2.0 of course was to point out that the Declaration was about secession. It was a wonderfully radical document that goes over the heads of the subservient wussy Americans of today. Most of them, anyway.

Barbara is correct that I see devolution (dispersion of power) to be road to de-facto anarchism. What with the internet and crypto, megapolitical conditions now favor lean and mean ministates over bloated welfare-warfare states. What will be the next Montenegro?