CRAIGforCONGRESS
Missouri's 7th District, U.S. House of Representatives

  
 
 

 

Congressional Issues 2012
GOVERNMENT
The Declaration of Independence (1776)
Congress should

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 among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, 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 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.

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.

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We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. 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.

It is now illegal to teach public school students that this document is really true.

The Theology of the Declaration of Independence:
Liberty Under God

"Anarcho-Theocracy"

The Indictment

1776

2010
  • He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
  • 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.
  • 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 of 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.
  • 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.
  • 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:
    • For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
    • For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
    • For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
    • For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
    • For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
    • For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
    • 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:
    • For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
    • 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.
  • He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the Lives of our people.
  • 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 & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
  • 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.
  • 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.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
  • The unconstitutional regulation by at least one federal agency, office, commission, bureau, or department of all goods and services traded domestically and internationally.
  • Establishment, in direct violation of the constitution, of a privately governed central bank whose sole purpose is to manipulate the monetary markets and which is not subject to public scrutiny and whose actions undermine the value of the American dollar to the detriment of the welfare of these United states.
  • Unconstitutional invasion, overthrow and occupation of sovereign foreign countries which pose no threat to the security of these United states based on political ideology to the detriment of the foreign nation and the welfare of the citizens of these United states.
  • Unconstitutional presence in allied foreign countries which pose no threat to the security of these United states and which levies unconscionable debt on the current and future citizens of these United states.
  • The implementation of an electoral system intended to marginalize third parties thereby limiting the choices presented to the electorate and giving an unfair advantage to the incumbents and leading to one party and/or one family or members of previous administrations also holding high-ranking offices in successive administrations, effectively creating an unconstitutional monarchy.
  • Unconstitutional manipulation of the tax laws to serve political agendas to the detriment of the welfare of these United states.
  • Unconstitutional alliances with special interests and big businesses to the detriment of the welfare of these United states.
  • Severe unconstitutional civil rights violations to include:
  • Restrictions on the freedom of speech.
  • Restrictions on our rights to bear arms.
  • Restrictions of use of private property.
  • Unconstitutional wire tapping on the citizens of these United states.
  • Torture.
  • Suspension of habeas corpus.
  • Furthermore, the consistently irresponsible behavior on the part of the elected congress in passing, without fully reading or understanding, legislation which violates the civil rights of these United states and levies unconscionable debt on the current and future citizens of these United states.
  • The impractical and logistically impossible size of the federal government makes it, by definition, an inefficient leviathan to the detriment of the welfare of these United states.

In every stage of these digressions citizens of these United states have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A president or legislator, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

From "Personal Declaration of Independence" by Don Cooper

See also:

The Declaration of Independence is "the Law of the Land"

We have summed up the Declaration of Independence in three words: "Liberty Under God." We have claimed that the Declaration of Independence is a "Theocratic" document, because it affirms that God Rules, and that we are a nation Under God.

Critics have responded by saying that the Constitution is purely secular, and overrides the Theocratic direction of the Declaration of Independence. This is false. The Declaration of Independence is like our nation's Birth Certificate. On the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared that

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

A "score" is twenty. If you went to a government-run school, you might not be able to do that math, but Lincoln was referring to 1776. He had earlier said,

These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” . . . . They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.
. . . [T]hey established these great self-evident truths that . . . their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew that battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land. . . . Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence . . . let me entreat you to come back. . . . [C]ome back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence.
Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence — Behind Blue Lines
Abraham Lincoln, The Works of Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Debates, John H. Clifford, editor (New York: The University Society Inc., 1908), Vol. III, pp. 126-127, August 17, 1858.

After America was born, she was dressed in the Articles of Confederation, as some infants wear a baptismal outfit. Then she was clothed in the Constitution, as adolescents have worn school uniforms.

Jefferson said we should not go another 20 years without another revolution. He denied that the Constitution was inspired and infallible. America needs to grow up and out of her school uniform, and wear a more mature outfit befitting her birth certificate.

If the Constitution is divorced from the Declaration of Independence, it becomes mere positive law. David Barton argues that the Declaration of Independence transcends the Articles of Incorporation, the Constitution of 1787, or any subsequent constitution, state or federal:

† For an in-depth statistical examination, with numerous additional charts, see a separate work by David Barton: America: To Pray or Not to Pray

The changes suggest that the new positivistic policies have resulted in drastic and unacceptable changes in morality, criminal behavior, education, and family stability—and these are but a few examples.†  Nevertheless, these are sufficient to suggest strongly that the institutionalization of positivism and the abandonment of the transcendent Biblical natural law principles have not produced national improvement or prosperity but have worked in the opposite direction.

While the Court’s change of standards has perhaps been a display of poor judgment, the Court’s actions have actually been illegal under the standards of original intent. Furthermore, they have violated the value system of “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” established in the Declaration of Independence.

Even though contemporary courts now regularly violate that legal standard, few today consider such violations significant for they believe the Constitution to be independent of the Declaration. This incorrect belief is of recent origin; in fact, it was rejected by earlier generations. As Samuel Adams pointed out:

Before the formation of this Constitution. . . . [t]his Declaration of Independence was received and ratified by all the States in the Union and has never been disannulled. (emphasis added)
Samuel Adams, The Writings of Samuel Adams, Harry Alonzo Cushing, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), Vol. IV, p. 357, to the Legislature of Massachusetts on January 17, 1794.

For generations after the ratification of the Constitution, the Declaration was considered a primary guiding document in American constitutional government. In fact, well into the twentieth century, the Declaration and the Constitution were viewed as inseparable and interdependent—not independent—documents.

Perhaps the proper relationship between the Declaration and the Constitution is best understood by a comparison with the relationship between a corporation’s Articles of Incorporation and its By-Laws—the two documents vital to its legal existence. The Articles of Incorporation call the entity into legal existence, and the By-Laws then explain how it will be governed. However, the governing of the corporation under its By-Laws must always be within the framework and purposes set forth in its Articles; the By-Laws may neither nullify nor supersede the Articles.

Such is the relationship between the Declaration and the Constitution; the Declaration is America’s articles of incorporation and the Constitution is its bylaws. The Constitution neither abolished nor replaced what the Declaration had established; it only provided the specific details of how American government would operate under the principles set forth in the Declaration.

Today, as the knowledge of this interdependent relationship has been widely lost or ignored, many individuals complain of the difficulties arising from the fact that the Founders placed no explicit moral values or rights and wrongs into the Constitution. However, the Founders needed to place no values in the Constitution (the bylaws) for they had already done so in the Declaration (the articles of incorporation).

Is there proof that the Founders believed that the Declaration was the foundational document in our Constitutional form of government? The answer is an emphatic, “Yes!” Notice, for example, that in Article VII, the Constitution attaches itself to the Declaration:

Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the States present the seventeenth day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven, and of the independence of the United States of America the twelfth. (emphasis added)

Furthermore, under the Constitution, the Founders dated their government acts from the year of the Declaration rather than the Constitution.

Notice a few examples (emphasis added in each quote):

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, in the city of New York, the 14th day of August, A.D. 1790, and in the fifteenth year of the Sovereignty and Independence of the United States. By the President: GEORGE WASHINGTON
James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897 (Authority of Congress, 1899), Vol. I, p. 80, August 14, 1790.

In testimony whereof I have caused the seal of the United States to be affixed to these presents, and signed the same with my hand. Done at Philadelphia, the 22nd day of July, A.D. 1797, and of the Independence of the United States the twenty-second. By the President: JOHN ADAMS
Richardson, Vol. I, p. 249, July 22, 1797.

In testimony whereof I have caused the seal of the United States to be hereunto affixed, and signed the same with my hand. Done at the city of Washington, the 16th day of July, A.D. 1803, and in the twenty-eighth year of the Independence of the United States. By the President: THOMAS JEFFERSON
Richardson, Vol. I, p. 357, July 16, 1803.

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States at the city of Washington, the 9th day of August, A.D. 1809, and of the Independence of the said United States the thirty-fourth. By the President: JAMES MADISON
Richardson, Vol. I, p. 473, August 9, 1809.

Given under my hand, at the city of Washington, this 28th day of April, A.D. 1818, and of the Independence of the United States the forty-second. By the President: JAMES MONROE
Richardson, Vol. II, p. 36, April 28, 1818.

Given under my hand, at the city of Washington, this 17th day of March, A.D. 1827, and the fifty-first year of the Independence of the United States. By the President: JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
Richardson, Vol. II, p. 376, March 17, 1827.

Given under my hand, at the city of Washington, this 11th day of May, A.D. 1829, and the fifty-third of the Independence of the United States. By the President: ANDREW JACKSON
Richardson, Vol. II, p. 440, May 11, 1829.

&c.

Additional evidence of the importance of the Declaration in our constitutional government is provided by the fact that the admission of territories as States into the United States was often predicated on an assurance by the State that its constitution would violate neither the Constitution nor the principles (i.e., the value system) of the Declaration. For example, notice these enabling acts granted by Congress for various States:

[T]he constitution, when formed, shall be republican, and not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and the principles of the Declaration of Independence. COLORADO
The Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations of the United States of America, George P. Sanger, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1866), Vol. XIII, p. 33, Thirty-Eighth Congress, Session 1, Chapter 37, Section 4, Colorado’s enabling act of March 21, 1864.

[T]he constitution, when formed, shall be republican, and not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and the principles of the Declaration of Independence. NEVADA
Id. at Vol. XIII, p. 31, Chapter 36, Section 4, Nevada’s enabling act of March 21, 1864.

The constitution, when formed, shall be republican, and not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and the principles of the Declaration of Independence. NEBRASKA
 Id. at Vol. XIII, p. 48, Chapter 59, Section 4, Nebraska’s enabling act of April 19, 1864.

The constitution shall be republican in form. . . and shall not be repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and the principles of the Declaration of Independence. OKLAHOMA
The Statutes at Large of the United States of America (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907), Vol. XXXIV, Part 1, p. 269, Fifty-Ninth Congress, Session 1, Chapter 3335, Section 3, Oklahoma’s enabling act of June 16, 1906.

In the Declaration, the Founders established the foundation and the core values on which the Constitution was to operate; it was never to be interpreted apart from those values. This was made clear by John Quincy Adams in his famous oration, “The Jubilee of the Constitution.” Adams explained:

[T]he virtue which had been infused into the Constitution of the United States . . . was no other than the concretion of those abstract principles which had been first proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. . . . This was the platform upon which the Constitution of the United States had been erected. Its virtues, its republican character, consisted in its conformity to the principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and as its administration . . . was to depend upon the . . . virtue, or in other words, of those principles proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Constitution of the United States.
John Quincy Adams, The Jubilee of the Constitution (New York: Samuel Colman, 1839), p. 54.

Generations later, President Abraham Lincoln reminded the nation of that same truth:

These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” . . . . They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.
. . . [T]hey established these great self-evident truths that . . . their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew that battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land. . . . Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence . . . let me entreat you to come back. . . . [C]ome back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence.
Abraham Lincoln, The Works of Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Debates, John H. Clifford, editor (New York: The University Society Inc., 1908), Vol. III, pp. 126-127, August 17, 1858.

The interdependent relationship between these two documents was clear, and even the U. S. Supreme Court openly affirmed it. At the turn of the century (1897), the Court declared:

The latter [Constitution] is but the body and the letter of which the former [Declaration of Independence] is the thought and the spirit, and it is always safe to read the letter of the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.
Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway Company v. Ellis, 165 U. S. 150, 160 (1897).

The Constitution cannot be properly interpreted nor correctly applied apart from the principles set forth in the Declaration; the two documents must be used together. Furthermore, under America’s government as originally established, a violation of the principles of the Declaration was just as serious as a violation of the provisions of the Constitution.

Nonetheless, Courts over the past half-century have steadily divorced the Constitution from the transcendent values of the Declaration, replacing them instead with their own contrivances. The results have been reprehensible— a series of vacillating and unpredictable standards incapable of providing national stability.

The Declaration of Independence acknowledges that America is a Christian Theocracy. The Constitution should have been interpreted in that light.

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