By John Stracke
Today is Independence Day, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It is customary on this day to celebrate our independence. However, we have gone well beyond independence, to domination. I have come to think that it may be more useful to reflect upon the Declaration, and consider how we have become like the empire our ancestors set out to oppose.
The first part that comes to mind is the part of the Declaration that we all know best:
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 rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
To an Englishman of the eighteenth century, this was a radical statement. In that society, it was self-evident that all men were not created equal. There were aristocrats, and there were commoners. Aristocrats were endowed by birth, not just with privileged position, but with the common assumption, embodied in law and custom, that they were better people than commoners.
America does not like to admit it, but we have our own aristocracy now. It is an aristocracy of wealth. Over 90% of the wealth of this country is controlled by fewer than 10% of the people. And wealth means power: power over politicians, who need money for their campaigns; power over courts, where a rich person can hire a more effective attorney; power over the media, which is increasingly unwilling to offend those who hold the pursestrings. And, increasingly, the wealthy are using this power to preserve their wealth and power--for example, by reducing their taxes.
Clearly, all men are not created equal in modern America.
The largest part of the Declaration is the litany of the crimes committed by George III (King George III, that is, not President George III). It is a powerful condemnation of the abuses of empire. But modern America has committed many of these same crimes upon the world.
| From the Declaration | Comments |
| He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. | America has blocked the Rio Declaration and the Kyoto Protocol, essential to the survival of the human species. Most other nations have signed on, but not the United States, the heaviest polluter. |
| He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. | |
| He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. | |
| He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. | |
| He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. | The United States has repeatedly toppled governments which opposed American economic interests. |
| He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. | |
| He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. | |
| He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. | The United States has refused to support the International War Crimes Tribunal, for fear that the crimes of its own soldiers might be punished. |
| He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. | |
| He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. | |
| He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures. | |
| He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. | The American military is, in effect, superior to civil power throughout the world. |
| He 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: | In effect, the abuse of American power means that all nations are subject to American jurisdiction, unacknowledged by their laws; resistance to American jurisdiction is punished, militarily or economically. |
| For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: | American troops are stationed throughout the world. |
| For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: | American agents (e.g., CIA) who kill foreigners frequently escape the justice of the nation where the crime is committed. The American soldiers who committed the atrocities at My Lai were tried in courts martial, rather than being subject to Vietnamese justice. In 2001, the American base in in Okinawa attempted to avoid turning over one of their soldiers to the local authorities after he raped a local woman. (Not "allegedly raped"; he was convicted.) |
| For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: | Consider Iraq or Cuba, embargoed as part of an effort to overthrow their governments. |
| For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: | |
| For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: | Consider the prisoners, captured in Afghanistan, held at Guantanamo; no trials are scheduled, and, if they occur, they will be military tribunals, rather than jury trials. |
| For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: | Guantanamo again. "Pretended offences" applies because some of the prisoners are being held without actual evidence that they themselves committed acts of terrorism. |
| For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: | American force has established compliant dictatorships throughout Central America, and used them to pressure the elected leaders of Nicaragua into surrendering to American interests. (Source: Deterring Democracy, by Noam Chomsky.) |
| For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: | Again, American force or connivance has toppled or perverted elected governments throughout the world. |
| For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. | |
| He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. | Does not strictly apply, since the United States does not formally claim to rule the world; however, there is a moral equivalent. America has power over the world, but does not recognize any responsibility to protect it, except when such protection furthers American interests. |
| He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. | See Afghanistan, Panama, or Vietnam. |
| He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. | President George III has declared that, in the future, the American military will be used for preemptive attacks, to complete the work of death begun in Afghanistan. |
| He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. | This one probably does not apply; America uses proxy forces where convenient (e.g., Afghanistan), but I am not aware of any case where such forces were compelled. This is a pragmatic matter, of course; volunteers are more reliable than conscripts. |
| He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. | American agents have excited domestic insurrections throughout the world. And our soldiers have committed "undistinguished destruction" far beyond those the Declaration attributes to the Native Americans. Consider My Lai, or Panama, or Deh Rawud. |
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