Op-Ed: Swap 'President' for 'King' in Declaration of Independence and 1 Thing Immediately Becomes Clear
Independence Day is upon us. There is no better time to return to the Declaration of Independence announcing our freedom than now.
Highlighting this founding document is a crucial part of our ongoing effort to educate our fellow Americans and an opportunity to reflect upon our history, beginning with the Founders’ revolutionary ideas and the costly sacrifices they made to realize them.
Our forefathers meant for us to visit them through the records they left us of their thoughts in hopeful and troubled times alike. They wanted us to speak with them, to bring them our questions and concerns, and to hear them, so we might find wisdom and guidance in our own time in order to preserve the liberty they won, not just for themselves, but for all who followed them — like us, more than two centuries later.
We know the Declaration nearly by heart, but poring through the text closely again, line by line, it’s astonishing to realize how much of it applies to our present predicament.
Here, for instance, is a line that can’t help but resonate with us now, ringing clear as the Liberty Bell through the ages: “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.”
Substitute “American president” for “King of Great Britain,” and you’ll see that the Founders’ description is as relevant as ever.
Rereading the revolutionaries’ complaints against the British crown, we find numerous parallels to the present and our repeated entreaties to the chief executive at the head of the current administration. Here are a few, edited for brevity:
- “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
- “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice.
- “He has erected a multitude of New Offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people.
- “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 imposing Taxes on us without our Consent; For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.
- “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers.
- “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.”
Taken together, we, as freeborn citizens who have inherited the legacy of the Founders whose vital blood courses through us, renew our forefathers’ demand for independence and thus rebel against tyranny.
Because of the government’s corruption, reaching as high as the first family; because of government censorship and the indoctrination of our children; because the government opened our border to criminals, cartels and terrorists; because of foreign policy that threatens our peace; because of economic policy that threatens our prosperity; because of soft policies on crime that threaten our lives; because of intelligence agencies that threaten our freedom; and because of the pathologically perverted policies endorsing drug abuse, abortion, communism, pornography and pedophilia that threaten our souls — because of all these and more, We the People demand our independence.
And we shall have it, this July 4 and onwards. The American people are dug in — this is our country and our inheritance. And our independence will not be denied.
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