patrickmurfin

A. LINCOLN

It’s Thanksgiving, the Great American holiday.  We tend to think of it as a cherished tradition handed down to us in tact from the stalwart Pilgrims.  But in fact the rescue feast of the decimated and starving survivors of the first winter in Plymouth made possible by the gift bearing Native Americans was for more than two hundred and forty years far from a national celebration.

As Forest Church points out in his new book SO HELP ME GOD: THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND THE FIRST GREAT BATTLE OVER CHURCH AND STATE, the proclamation of a “Thanksgiving” by colony Governor William Bradford was just the first in of many “thanksgivings” proclaimed by colonial authorities in New England in celebration of many things, including military victories over the same Indians they had dined with in 1621.  These were the flip side of the even more commonly proclaimed “days of humiliation and fasting” to atone for sins for which it was believe that the Almighty was chastising its people.

The Plymouth Thanksgiving was not even the first.  The gentlemen adventurers at Virginia’s Berkley Hundred  had beaten them to it in 1619.  But the Virginia Anglicans did not endow that episode with the mythology with which New Englanders shrouded their 1621 dinner party.

Over the years the New England celebration began to be re-enacted annually in late autumn after all of the Harvest chores were safely passed.  The exact date would be determined each year by local or colony wide proclamations.   Because Puritan divines abhorred the celebration of Christmas as a heathen festival, the annual Thanksgivings became the central winter (ok, late fall) festival allowing for a modicum of pious gaiety and providing an opportunity for scattered families to gather.  One diarist, visiting Virginia in the years around the Revolution noted with amazement the way Southerners celebrated Christmas by hanging greens, feasting, and rounds of balls noted sternly “At home we have Thanksgiving!”

In 1789 George Washington, celebrating the adoption of the Constitution and the opening of the new government, issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation for a Thursday in late November.  The date was likely chosen because Washington had once commanded a largely New England army.  But it did not reference the Pilgrims, and like all of Washington’s public statements, neglected to mention, or be obsequious to God.  Washington’s prestige was such that this proclamation, while drawing criticism by those worried about religious interference in affairs of state, was of limited controversy.  Later, similar proclamations by John Adams, however, would be met by literal riots in the streets.  After his ascension to the Presidency in the Revolution of 1800, Thomas Jefferson, the champion of religious liberty and separation of church and state, put an end to these exercises in public piety.

Yet as a regional celebration, Thanksgiving only grew in significance.  The old Pilgrim tales became the stuff of Romantic legend.  More importantly, the advent of railroads, canals and turnpikes made possible annual reunions by the New England families who found their descendents scattered across the region, spilling into Upstate New York and on into the wilds of Ohio reaching as far west as Illinois.  That same diaspora established Thanksgiving traditions where ever they settled.  It was in this era when elements of the annual traditions including Pilgrim tales, turkey, the Cornucopia, and especially the family reunion became firmly united.

In the midst of the Civil War another President with unorthodox religious beliefs, felt the need to unite what was left of the shattered union.  It was a bleak time.  Military disaster seemed to be the rule on every front.  Agitation for peace on terms of Southern separation was on the increase.  Abraham Lincoln may not have been much—if any kind—of a Christian.  But he believed in the hand of “Providence” and more than once contemplated on whether the trials of the nation were not the just punishments of that hand.  More over he needed, now more than ever, the support of the powerful Protestant clergy, who had never ceased to agitate for the return of periodic Thanksgiving proclamations.  So it was natural that he turned to such a proclamation in the dark hour of 1862.  It was that act that would nationalize the holiday permanently and why the celebration today is as much Lincoln’s as the Pilgrims.

Reading Lincoln, we today are struck by the majestic power of his words.  How we might long for a leader who, in the midst of a long and bloody national crisis, could rise to such levels and not invoke a narrow and vengeful Old Testament war god or portray an immediate agent of God’s unquestioned will.

*****

THEODORE PARKER                         TYPICAL MID 19TH CENTURY ANTI-IRISH CARTOON

The following is another musing occasioned by a topic posted to the UU HISTORY CHAT LIST.

I have been pondering the charges of anti-Irish bigotry against THEODORE PARKER and more particularly the article in the WEST ROXBURY TRANSCRIPT that inspired your question.

I am not Parker scholar and cannot vouchsafe that he did or did not do as charged by writer DON HUBBARD:

…Theodore Parker who once arrogantly advocated that Irish immigrants be consigned to concentration camps for 31 years because, “certainly it would take all this time to clean a paddy on the outside…To clean him inwardly would be like picking all the sands of the Sahara.”

Deeper scholars than I can investigate it.  My guess is that this or something like it can be mined from Parker voluminous writings.  It reads like it may have been written in private coorespondence or even in a journal.  I doubt if it made it into a sermon, lecture, or published article.  But I could be wrong.

Of course the problem of writing off Parker’s entire career on the basis of this statement is ludicrous.  There are many things to consider—if he did write it.  When did he write it and under what circumstances?  Did it remain a fixed principle? Was it an off-hand comment?  Did he change his opinion?  Did he ever act to carryout out the proposal?  Did he encourage others to do so? 

Then there is the problem of  how Hubbard framed the quote using loaded and inflamatory language, particularly “CONCENTRATION CAMP.”  Whatever Parker may or may not have suggested, it was surely not a “concentration camp.”  That particular gift to humanity was not yet invented or envissioned.  The world owes it to the BRITISH EMPIRE, which created and named it during the BOER WAR.

Hubbard’s insistence that Parker must be erased from history and that his every thought, action, and writing be disregarded is most troubling.  It is an example of extreme dualistic thinking.  One is either all good or all bad.  The slightest sin corrupts utterly.  It is not an uncommon fault.  One finds it in the howling of those who insist that the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE is a sham and a fraud because THOMAS JEFFERSON was a slave holder.

Such thinking ignores the complexity of human life, let alone due respect for “the worth and dignity of every individual.”  In plain fact there are no pure saints or pure devils.  Our greatest contemporary heroes—MARTIN LUTHER KING, GHANDI, NELSON MANDELLA, MOTHER THERESA—sinned at least occasionally.  And our blackest villains—HITTLER, STALIN, POL POT—did not live out their entire lives devoid of occasional acts of kindness or an elevated thought.

All of this is not to let Parker—or us as UU’s off the hook.  We have long had a tendency toward near idolatry of certain of our historic figures.  Blind hero worship invites the idol smasher.

In point of fact if Parker did write as charged, he was only reflecting a very common understanding among his fellow Unitarians and his fellow Bostonians.  Part of it was rooted in the historic Puritan disdain for “Popery” which flourished even through the 18th Century when there were damn few Catholics in Boston to persecute.  Note the annual parades of mechanics and apprentices mocking the Pope on GUY FAWKES DAY out of which grew the political muscle that became SONS OF LIBERTY.

This was certainly inflamed by the arrival of masses of Irish immigrants which began as a trickle after the failed IRISH REBELION OF 1798 and became a torrent with the POTATO FAMINE.  Not only were these people Catholic, but unlike earlier immigrants from Germany or the French Huguenots, they were not well bred, propertied, or for the most,  part even literate.  They were the starving dregs of a long suppressed Irish peasantry—crude, rude, loud, and disorderly.  They drank, stank, and brawled.   And on Sunday they swore fealty to an alien church.  At least that is how the genteel Bostonians in Unitarian pews saw it.  And that view might have been mild compared to the opinion of the native workers who were suddenly forced to compete with this hoard for rare jobs and depressed wages.  (Almost an exact mirror to today’s hysteric reaction to “illegal” Hispanic immigration.)

The largely Unitarian Boston elite—of which Parker was a member, even if as scandalizing semi-heretic—did indeed do everything in their power to hold the immigrant Irish down.  Our proud BRAHMINS sustained the “No Irish Need Apply” placards that could still be found in shop windows in the 1920’s.  Even some of our cherished reforms were often arrows drawn against the bosom of alien Catholicism—HORACE MANN’S public education being the prime example.  It was finally enacted in the hope of forcing grubby Irish children out of Catholic schools into institutions in which they could properly be dosed with Protestant propriety on the faint chance that they might become civilized.

Anti-Catholicism remained a strain of though in Unitarianism well into the 20th Century.  Beacon Press was still publishing—to great success—anti-Catholic screeds in the 1950’s.

UU’s have worked studiously to forget all of this.  When the topic is brought up, they are apt to stick their fingers in their ears and start humming loudly.  When I have brought the subject up before, I have been attacked for doing so.  And some defend anti-Catholicism as the legitimate aspect of the Radical Reformation heritage of which we are a part.  Others point to abuse scandals and the increasingly authoritarian and rigid posture of the Church with a certain smug “I told you so” attitude.  Now that there are many more former Catholics than born-and-bred UUs in the pews, some of those who feel wounded by the Church have echoed these sentiments.

If we have forgotten, the working class Irish of Boston have not.  Go to any bar in SOUTHIE.  They know who their ancient enemies were both in the AULD SOD and in the New World.  And they include all those fine Unitarians whose statues dot BEAN TOWN.

    
                JOHN ADAMS                                              THOMAS JEFFERSON

            I have been invited to read the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE today as the McHENRY COUNTY PEACE GROUP rallies around a reproduction of the STATUE OF LIBERTY on the side lines of the CRYSTAL LAKE GALA PARADE.  Regular readers here know that the Group was banished from this year’s parade for carrying a “political statement” on a placard in last years parade—a simple list of the “Cost of the War” in Iraq.  If you are not up to speed on this story, just scroll down the blog for more information.

            Any way this is, more or less, what I am going to say introduction:

            It was unbearably hot in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776.  The men crowded into the small rooms above a tavern occupied by a young Virginia lawyer, THOMAS JEFFERSON.  Joining Jefferson were JOHN ADAMS, a Massachusetts lawyer with a combative personality; and BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, the brilliant elder statesman from Pennsylvania. 
            Together they had been assigned by the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS to draft a momentous resolution—nothing short of a complete declaration of independence of the 13 North American British colonies from the mother county. 

Colonists had been fighting Red Coats for more than a bloody year.  But until this very moment, many of the rebels hoped only to establish the right of self government as loyal subjects of the King.  But things had now gone too far.  Too much blood had been shed.  It had become apparent to the delegates that it had to be all or nothing—win independence or be hung as traitors.

Young Jefferson was the consensus choice as the primary author not only because of his noted skill with the quill, but because as a Virginian he would carry more weight in the southern and middle colonies than New Englander Adams.

Adams was a stern editor and to Jefferson’s distress eliminated some phases and reworked others.  Franklin used his good humor and the esteem in which both of the other men held him to smooth ruffled feathers.  
            Congress, when they received the document, tinkered further, eliminating, much to Jefferson’s distress, an accusation against the Crown for fostering the slave trade. 

On July 2nd Congress adopted a resolution for Independence.  On July 4th delegates began affixing their signatures to the official document.  It would be weeks before the last ones did.  But the deed was done.  The newly named UNITED STATES OF AMERICA proclaimed itself a self-governing nation.  But they would have to fight a long war to establish that in fact.

In a letter to his wife, believing that July 2nd, the day the resolution was adopted, would become the anniversary celebrated, wrote:

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

---John Adams in a letter to Abigail July 3, 1776

Fifty years later, in one of the amazing coincidences of all history, both Adams and Jefferson lay on their death beds.  The two men had been close friends and comrades in the revolution.  They became bitter political rivals.  Jefferson defeated Adams in the Presidential election of 1800.  In their later years their mutual friend, DR. BENJAMIN RUSH, enticed them to resume correspondence.  The resulting exchange of letters by the two old patriots is now rightly regarded as an American treasure. 

On July 4th 1826, Adams gasped to the family surrounding him, “Thomas Jefferson still survives!” and died.  He was wrong.  Jefferson had passed hours earlier at MONTECELLO.

Ten days before his death, in his last public communication, Jefferson had to decline an invitation from the citizens of near-by Charlottesville to attend their Fourth of July celebration.  But he took the opportunity to once again affirm his faith in the American experiment:

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.  The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor the favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.  There are grounds for hope for others.  For ourselves, let the annual return of this day, forever refresh our recollection of those rights and an undiminished devotion to them.”

Thomas Jefferson, to the citizens of Charlottesville, Virginia June 23, 1826

            Today, as we gather here under these circumstances perhaps it would be well to consider who today is booted and spurred, eager to saddle the backs of humanity.  With that in mind, here are the words of Jefferson, Adams and the Continental Congress.

                       
SOUTHERN BAPTIST Logo.                                         Real helfire--GLOBAL WARMING . 

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

--THOMAS JEFFERSON

That’s Jefferson at his pithiest in defense of religious liberty.  It is one of my favorite quotes, and a mantra I intone to myself when ever religious zealotry—and bigotry—annoy me.  And there has been plenty of occasion for that lately.

I also like it because it puts a practical limit on toleration—worship what you must, believe what you will, but don’t harm me, mine, or—by extension—any one else who does not share your peccadilloes.   I might also add human sacrifice, enslavement, and child abuse as religious practices I am not prepared to ignore.

But that still leaves plenty of wiggle room.  Do What Thou Wilt—and so will I. This idea of religious liberty—and mutual respect—has been essential in keeping a religiously diverse, ethnically and racially polyglot (mostly) at peace with each other for more than two hundred years.

But it has been getting harder whistling past the grave yard every year when the SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION (SBC) gathers.  The thing is, they are very hard to ignore. 

Last week, meeting in SAN ANTONIO, they were at it again.  This time they were tackling the topic of global warming.  SBC leaders have been seething since Evangelical heavy weights including RICK WARREN, got together earlier this year to proclaim global warming a human created threat and calling Christians to work to reverse it as a matter of stewardship.  SBC honcho want none of it.  They oppose action on global warming because it might detract attention from “the fundamental moral issues of the day including abortion and homosexual marriage.”  Translation:  “We’re agin’ it cause them damn Lib-ur-uls are for it.”  They also make a feeble claim that action on global warming will “hurt the poor” by interfering with a “market economy.”  Translation:  “Hey, we made a deal with the rich to watch their backs if they would help us snuff out faggots.”

So the SBC big-wigs engineered a vote on a RESOLUTION opposing any governmental action to reduce green house gasses or act in any way to intervene.  The leadership even succeeded in striping a mild provision in the original resolution that would have called on government to continue to “monitor” the situation.  It might encourage actual action down the line.  While they acknowledge global warming is occurring and even that humanity may contribute its acceleration, they basically regard it as an “act of God.”  

The SBC has become the largest American Protestant denomination--16,300,000 members according (probably somewhat inflated) figures provided by the Convention its self in 2005.  They are the dominant religious voice—in some areas almost monolithic—across the historic CONDFEERACY. While state conventions in TEXAS and VIRGINIA, alarmed by the subversion of traditional Baptist values by the national leadership have disaffiliated with the SBC, large rumps in both states have organized in fealty to the national group and many individual congregations support both factions.

The SBC is also aggressively expanding beyond it traditional regional base.  SBC churches—many of them suburban mega churches—thrive in every state and often aggressively challenge liberal and moderate Baptists from the AMERICAN BAPTISTS CHURCHES and other Baptist bodies in the North.  Growth has been particularly strong in the Mid West, Mountain, and Southwest states and in vast suburban sprawl of Southern California.  In some of these northern areas it has even attracted some middle class Blacks from the Afro-American NATIONAL BAPTISTS, despite the historically racist attitude of the SBC, which only grudgingly admitted slavery was an error a few years ago.

 Since a take over of the SBC by Fundamentalists with financial support from political reactionaries in 1979, they have marched stridently and resolutely to the extreme right, both theologically and politically.  To make that take-over effective the conservatives had to erase traditional Baptist CONGREGEGATIONAL POLITY and give the denomination authority to discipline members, ministers and church’s which dare dissent from the every narrower orthodoxy laid down nationally.  That’s right, Baptists share with CONGREGATIONALSITS (now the UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST) and UNITARIANS (now part of the UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION) the tradition of independent, self-governing churches bound together voluntarily for mutual support.  But independent, self-governing churches have a tendency to wander off the proscribed path doing things like—gasp—ordaining women (once accepted by the SBC, but now opposed), or taking a less than absolutist position on abortion (the SBC was once neutral on the subject) so they have to be brought under control.

For that matter, Baptists were once considered a backbone of democracy, brining the democratic impetus of the congregational meeting to the frontier and offering an alternative to neo-aristocratic rule (by the largely EPISCOPAL planter cast.  And—race issues aside—Southern Baptist congregations were often sensitive to social justice issues.  They worked and played well with others in advancing reforms ranging from prohibition to child labor laws.  They were considered as “mainstream” as METHODISTS, PRESBYTERIANS, or LUTHERANS.The insurgent conservative SBC leadership has swept all of that aside in less than a generation

 And despite the fact that “Separation of Church and State” has been a basic traditional Baptist doctrine, the modern leaders of the SBC openly aspire to recasting government along “Christian,” i.e. Baptist lines.  While not open advocates of DOMINIONISM (the belief that Christians must rule the state as agents of Christ), the SBC of recent years seems to be sliding in that direction.
            The Convention, which enjoyed a sycophantic telephone visit by KING GEORGE W, it seriously means to use all means at its disposal to keep any one from taking action.

And that is where it threatens to “pick my pocket and break my bones.”

Once again I received one of those requests to send a message to my Congressman in my e-mail. Now I am so backed up with e-mail that this item was posted nearly a week ago.  But it got my attention.

            Actually, I have been meaning for some time to address the issue at hand in conjunction with an AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION campaign.  But it was a request for action from TRUE MAJORITY (see the item under President or King?) that finally stirred me to action.  They asked me to send the following message:

The right of habeas corpus is one of the oldest founding principles of our democracy – the right of someone held by the government to ask why they have been seized. THE MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT cancelled that right, and I insist that Congress restore it. I urge you to support efforts by REP. JERROLD NADLER to add language which does that into the Defense Authorization Bill, and also to back bills such as the Habeas Restoration Act.

            Of course, I felt compelled to sound off at greater length.  So I whipped up the rant below.  It was too long to go into the editable message, so I sent the above and then e-mailed the whole shebang separately to my Congressman, DON MANZULLO (R-16).  Here is what I had to say:

The hallowed writ of HABIAS CORPUS traces its roots in British Common Law into the mists of antiquity and was codified as early at 1679.  The architects of our Constitution viewed it as such a basic cornerstone of individual liberty that it was specifically in Article I, Section 9:  “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.”

                In the entire history of the United States the “Great Writ” was suspended only briefly by Abraham Lincoln in the midst of a full scale armed insurrection against the authority of the Federal Government.  The President now dubiously claims this as a precedent for his own trampling of basic human rights, trying—ridiculously—to wrap himself in Lincoln’s historic mantle as he does so.   Yet we behold no rebellion, no invasion.  What Lincoln employed as a desperate temporary measure to forestall a COPPERHEAD rebellion in support of the South, George W. Bush foresees as a permanent aspect of a vague and never ending “War on Terror.”

                The present administration has shown on-going contempt for both the basic liberties of the American People and for any attempt to constrain its limitless assertion of power by either Courts or Congress and—evidence now suggests—by tampering with the election process itself to thwart the sovereignty of the People.

                Surely there are bad people in the world who wish us harm.  And there exists a vast array of tools and weapons with which to combat them.  The current administrations rush to do so by employing the tools and weapons of despotism itself—torture, illegal detention, rigged star chamber courts, indefinite sentences, and the denial of any review by any court anywhere—condemns us in the eyes of the world and in our own shocked consciences.

                The President has claimed that much of this is permissible because most of those so detained are not American citizens subject to the protection to the Constitution or legitimate combatants who can claim protection under the traditional protections of the GENEVA CONVENTIONS.  That these individuals may enjoy any fundamental rights as human beings protected by any species of international law, is contemptuously dismissed.

                But the President’s ambitions to crush the right of habeas corpus do not end with swarthy, alien “ISLAMOFASCISTS” for whom he believes the American people will waste no sympathy, but to American citizens captured abroad either  “in arms” against the United States or suspected of conspiring to assist international terrorists. He also wishes to include citizens, legal alien residents, and aliens of all immigration status arrested in the United States, who would normally be subject to the protection of habeas corpus.

                The vague definitions and broad powers of the PATRIOT ACT make it possible for the Administration to classify as “Terrorists” just about any one they choose on criteria they make up and do not have to disclose to anyone.  Construed loosely any one in opposition to the government could be so designated if they acted in a “conspiracy” which aims to influence policy through “violence.”  A rowdy demonstration, even passive resistance that results in violence by the authorities could result in a group and any one associated with it to be declared “terrorists.”

                That this administration has not yet sunk to such depths is small comfort.  They clearly desire to have at least the ability to do so.

                To be frank, my appeal to you in defense of habeas corpus can be attributed solely to personal cowardice.  I have mocked and ridiculed this administration.  I have done my very best fist to stop an illegal war and then to end it.  I have marched, spoken, written in open opposition.  I have encouraged “resistance” and “rebellion” against a government I consider both illegitimate (by virtue of obtaining power by election fraud and perpetuating itself in a range on illegal, un-Constitutional usurpations of authority.)  I have “associated” through various organizations and in communications others who hold similar views, with some of whom have occasionally broken the law and others who will do so in the future.  I reserve my right as a free citizen to resist oppression, even by my own government as outlined by Thomas Jefferson in the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

                So, if the day comes that George W. Bush decides (or Dick Cheney decides for him) that descent is sufficiently inconvenient, or that the American People—who have already rejected their war, their policy, and ambitions—may be ready to rise up and hold them accountable for their multiple betrayals of the public trust, then I am as likely to hear the midnight knock on the door and to be dragged off to disappear into indefinite detention as any man or woman in this country.

                I know that the gossamer restraints of habeas corpus may not in the end restrain any determined despot.  But as long as we wish to remain a nation of laws it is some defense.

                Congressman Manzullo, I beg you on behalf of my own fear for my own worthless hide, to fully restore the right of habeas corpus.

As evidenced by the enthusiasm for. My recent post of Barak Obama’s speech, this guest writer business is pretty popular with readers here.  So in honor of Independence Day, we are going to turn things over to another guest bloger.

VIRGINIA RED, or LONG TOM as he is known on his My Space page, is a popular wordsmith.  The political diatribe of which he was the main author that follows has achieved something of a cult like following.  Although he generally gets authorship credit, a posse of associated bloggers contributed, edited and tweaked this political screed.  They include THAT OTHER ADAMS (so designated to differentiate him from his much better known cousin, a Boston ward heeler and disreputable rabble rouser named Sam) and OLD SPARKY, an elderly and exocentric Philadelphian.  Also involved were HUDSON RIVER BOBBY and Connecticut’s NUTMEG SUREMAN, whose main job seemed to be proofreading. 

The piece has been floating around for a few years and is frequently quoted, particularly its rousing introduction.  It blatant hostility toward authority and its bold assertion of some kind of equality among humanity have long irritated conservatives and frightened those at ease with unlimited power in their own hands.  Malcontents of every stripe—abolitionists, suffragettes, trade unionists, civil rights marchers, even immigrants, furiners,and Queers have taken the words to heart and incorporated them in their own agitations.

Most readers, however, will be unfamiliar with the bill of particulars RED and the boys drew up against George Rex, the reigning bad guy of the time.  Those trouble makers over at VETS FOR PEACE stumbled on the complete text and decided that most of it could apply more or less the current George, the Resident of the United States.  They are even using the text as the basis for a bill of impeachment against W., and they didn’t have to do much tinkering.

It just goes to show you what a hot potato this is.  Read for yourself.  Share with your friends and family between beers and brats this Fourth of July.

Virginia Red (Second from Right) and the Boys, That Other Adams (John Adams), Hudson River Bobby (Robert Livingston),  Nutmeg Sureman (Roger Sherman), and  Old Sparky (Benjamin Franklin).  Picture Courtesy Trumbull.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united 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 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 shewn 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.

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 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.

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 benefit 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 attentions 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.

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.

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McHenry County Democrats report that sales are brisk for their $75 a head Thomas Jefferson Dinner fundraiser.  The dinner will be held at the up-scale Bull Valley Country Club at 7 pm, June 17 and features such Democratic luminaries as Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Lt. Governor Pat Quinn, Secretary of State Jessie White, and Congresswoman Melissa Bean.

            The event marks a new aggressiveness for the local party under the leadership of Patrick Ouimet, the newly elected County Chair.  In previous years low key, low cost fundraisers held in a bowling ally, at a less elegant golf courses, or even in the front yards of committee members, might be expected to raise a few hundred dollars and be attended by dozens.  By contrast the Jefferson dinner is expected to raise $20,000 for the upcoming election cycle.

            The concentration of high wattage state wide figures speaks volumes of both the state party’s determination to ramp up its visibility in the traditionally Republican County, and the local party’s intention to make a serious assault on the bastion of Republican power, the McHenry County Board.

“The inaugural Jefferson Dinner will be the first of many watershed events organized by the McHenry County Democratic Party celebrating the birth of Democracy in our Nation and in McHenry County,” predicts Ouimet.

The dinner will also feature awards to two veteran Democrats.   Attorney Herb Franks, former President of the Illinois Bar Association and long time supporter of Democratic candidates state wide and locally, will be presented the first Annual Thomas Jefferson Lifetime Achievement Award.  Franks is the father of State Representative Jack Franks.  Bob Gibson, a retired union official and the longest serving Precinct Representative in McHenryCounty, will receive the Bob McGarry Award for Community Service, named in honor of the popular late McHenry County Party Chair.

Some tickets remain available, but tables are filling fast.  For tickets and information contact Fundraising Committee Chair Paula Yensen at 815 404-3918.

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