Everybody has a “Fourth of July”.  To me, this is “Independence Day”.

The colonies didn’t jump up all of a sudden and say “Dude!  We need us a COUNTRY!” Nope.  Didn’t happen.  They put up with British crap for a long time.  The Revolution was already a reality in the minds of men before the first shots were fired at Concord.

“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”.

And we’ve suffered.  We’ve watched an ever-growing federal government become ever LESS responsive to the “makers” of this country and more responsive to the “takers”. 

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” 

We’ve watched vast bureaucracy grow, completely unresponsive to the people, unelected and uncontrollable.

We have watched Washington take precedence over every state and local government. 

“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.”

We have received an unresponsive legislature bent on re-election by manipulation of unrestrained suffrage.  Manipulations of the uninformed electorate have given Congress power to rubber-stamp tax after tax: 

“For imposing taxes on us without our consent”

What powers have the “makers” to stop a tax that will put money in the pockets of the “takers’ and consolidate the positions of an unresponsive government?

The Constitution of the United States was written to give the federal government a short and finite list of responsibilities and powers, restrained at its adoption by the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights.  Since the Civil War we have seen the power of Washington grow every year, occasionally halting, but never stepping back in its seizure of power from the states and the people.

It is hard to envision the founding Fathers putting together a government that would dictate how much water your toilet could use to flush, but we have such a government now.  It is difficult to imagine Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin setting up the Federal government to confiscate money from working people and give it to generation after generation of people who do nothing for the money except vote for politicians who keep the money coming.  It boggles the mind that the same government who would send a degreed engineer out of the country because his work visa had expired would simultaneously turn its back on a thousand illegal ‘immigrants’ who flood across the border to have ‘anchor babies’ who thereby guarantee their families free rides on government largesse.

But that’s what we have.  “Standing armies”?  We have a federal government where the freakin’ MEAT INSPECTORS carry firearmsor where a TAX AGENCY (BATF) can commandeer military vehicles to storm a church and burn it down around women and children.

I’d pretty well say we’re living up to the “disposed to suffer” for quite a while.

At the time of the Revolution it was said that only three percent of the population thought enough of the idea to hit the field with rifle in hand and take on what was arguably the mightiest military force on the planet.  Half the forming nation supported the idea as long as it didn’t cost them too darned much inconvenience, a quarter honestly didn’t care one way or the other, and the rest were perfectly happy to support the King.

Today we have very poor ground from which to sprout the new republic, but patience is wearing thin.

The Sons of Liberty didn’t dump THEIR OWN TEA into Boston Harbor.