Pro Rege Papers

Many people call the War of Independence the “Revolutionary War”, or the “American Revolution.” They compare our independence with other guerrilla wars that thugs and criminals propagate. However, the word “revolution” does not necessarily apply to what we did in 1775-1781.

A revolution refers to a complete turn-around of all society. It is an abolishment of all that was before. It is a 180 change in direction. This is the sort of thing that happened in France and Russia. The government was abolished, society was completely changed, and institutions destroyed. Revolution is a proper term for that type of rebellion.

However, the War of Independence was not a bunch of lunatics going around burning houses down and murdering people. It was an organized rebellion against an authority that had over-stepped its boundaries. The events of 1775 were the culmination of a long train of abuses by the British. In response, we organized the Stamp Act Congress, the First Continental Congress, and the Second Continental Congress to combat the oppression of the English king. The leaders of our rebellion were respected men whose aims were not to destroy the lifelines of society. Our war was merely for the purpose of changing government.

John Calvin said that a revolt against the established government is acceptable when that power has been abusive for a long time. He also said that the leaders of the rebellion should be “lesser-magistrates” who understand the workings of government. That way, the result will be an organized government that accomplishes the ideals of the rebellion, and not anarchy or tyranny. This model set forth by Calvin is what happened in the United States. We reformed government; we didn’t destroy it. That is why the War for American Independence has been one of the most successful rebellions in history. All others (e.g. Haiti) go nowhere. Sometimes they actually make things worse.

The declaration of Independence is one of the greatest works of all time. In commemoration of its adoption by the Second Continental Congress, here is the transcript:

In Congress, July 4, 1776.

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 harrass 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:

1. For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

2. For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

3. For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

4. For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

5. For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

6. For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

7. 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:

8. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

9. 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 Brittish 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.

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

Pretty much everyone in the United States knows that the UN is dysfunctional. However there are some recent developments that are disturbing.

One concern (and that’s stating it mildly) is the recent additions to the UN “Human Rights Council.” The new countries on the committee are: China, Russia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, and (as if those weren’t bad enough) Cuba! What a nice list of countries with reputations for being the most brutal and torturous on the planet. I’m sure they would give good advice to France, Germany, and etc. on how to deal with Darfur and other failed situations.

The UN defeats its primary purpose: stopping war. With all the warring countries together, the rogue countries (e.g. China, Russia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba) can bully around, manipulate, and deceive others and get away with it. The UN has not stopped a single war from happening since WWII. It was NATO, not the UN that stopped the Cold War. The UN still hasn’t done anything about Darfur.

The UN is a lumbering old giant that can’t solve problems. The Oil-for-Food scandal, (the program is also known as “Oil-for-Terrorism,” “Oil-for-Palaces,” “Oil-for-alliances with France” etc.) run by Kofi Annan’s son, is good proof of that.

One glimmer of hope is that ambassador John Bolton has the guts to stand up to all the left European countries. The only problem is that he’s at that post only for a little while. The Democrats in Congress didn’t want someone who would institute change, so they stopped him with ridiculous charges at the Senate floor. Then Bush pulled a little-known law off the shelf and dusted it off, making Bolton the ambassador to the UN without the Senate’s approval. Bolton is trying all he can to reform the organization, but there’s only so much you can do within a defective system such as the UN.

The US pays the most into UN coffers, (I think about 20% of their revenue comes from us) but we only get one vote on key issues. The UN constitution is flawed. For that matter the whole organization is flawed.

There is an intriguing proposal out there that promises to solve a lot of our economic problems. It’s called FairTax. FairTax replaces all taxes, Social Security, income, estate, etc., with one big 23% sales tax.

According tax advocates, this would get rid of tax loopholes, complicated forms, the IRS, and many other things that annoy us. FairTax would let the economy run fairly free and help families in the long run.

One of the benefits I see is that it penalizes something that Americans are doing too much of: buying. Americans are going into deep debt from just normal purchases. It also loosens the penalty on things people should do: save, invest, make money, marry, etc. If you want to encourage something, you make it less expensive; if you want to discourage something, you charge a lot for it. That’s what FairTax does.

It’s an extremely fascinating proposition, but I doubt it will muster enough of a following to make an impact in Congress any time soon. John Linder is the main advocate right now in Congress, and he’s pushing for the FairTax intensely.

More information is at www.fairtax.org and World Magazine.

Sometimes I wonder why people still cling to communism. Since its earliest days, it has been disproven over and over and over again.

One of the earliest instances I can think of is with the Jamestown colony. The settlers there set up a “common warehouse” system. Everything that was produced or acquired was distributed equally among all the colonists. Thus, no one was rewarded for hard labor, and no one had any incentive for providing food, because they would be fed anyway. You see the result in the many famines and near-death winter experiences. In spite of the failure, this method was tried with many other colonies in the 1600s as well. Communism doesn’t work well.

A few more examples can be seen with the many experimental settlements in the mid-1800s. These attempts were largely communistic in nature, and likewise failed. You always hear these stories about so-and-so founding a communal village somewhere, and it failing soon after beginning. Communism doesn’t work well.

Then you come to the BIG experiments of the 20^th century starting with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. The czars were overthrown, and the U.S.S.R. was founded. This big experiment also deteriorated and rotted until its collapse in 1991, being unable to compete with the free United States under Reagan. Communism doesn’t work well.

China was also overcome by communism, and continues to this day as a communist state. China; however, is an odd case. When Mao Zedong instituted the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, things didn’t go so well. Deng, his successor, had to send students to Western universities to learn how to clean up the mess. After the 1989 event, the Chinese were given more economic freedoms, and China ceased to be communistic. Today China is a convoluted form of a capitalistic state with a dictatorship. Communism doesn’t work well.

The only true communistic states out there today are North Korea and Cuba. Even those aren’t so much communist as t dictatorships. They’re not that successful either. The “worker’s paradise” is a delusion that has never been achieved.

With all these failures, you would think that people would give up on communism, but they still cling to it like an infant to his blanket.

Now there’s a touchy subject. Welfare was introduced in the ’30s by FDR. The idea was that poverty would disappear in America by just throwing money at it. By taxing the rest of the country, they could redistribute the wealth to the poor. Despite the good intentions, the program does not work well. Poverty is still around, people are staying poor, and jobs are still lost. And no, the solution is not to throw more money at the system.

The word “welfare” only means (in this sense) the aiding of poor or unemployed citizens. It doesn’t mean necessarily that the government administers that aid. In older times, that’s what welfare meant: the aiding of private citizens by other private citizens, or groups of them. This usually worked very well, until you had a situation like the Great Depression where practically everyone was poor. The sources of aid that had done the job in previous situations were no longer available, or just exhausted. In this case, I think it is all right for a government to step in and aid its citizens, using money that has been saved up for such emergencies. That’s another example of what I spoke about before with regards to socialism being appropriate in emergencies. The problem occurs when the government continues to assume its role as the big daddy of everyone after the emergency has passed. It doesn’t work, and there are many problems that have come up, are coming up, and many more that likely will come up.

Here are a few:

The welfare agents don’t know the private situations and backgrounds of the people they serve. They can’t understand each personal case because they usually aren’t from the area. Thus, they can be deceived by some shady people into giving money away.

The welfare system puts an extra, unneeded burden on the people.

Welfare also promotes a kind of laziness, and unwillingness to work or get out of the present situation. Instead of the alcoholic working for his liquor, the government now pays for it with the money of hardworking people. That makes sense. People who would otherwise work hard to get out of poverty now don’t have as much of an impetus to do so. “There’s time, Uncle Sam will pay for it.” You see the effect in New Orleans. I’m not saying that all poor people are a bunch of lazy slouches who sit around watching TV, and sipping beer. What I am saying is that welfare is not good for getting people out of poverty, off the rolls, and into productive roles in society. It does not accomplish its primary function of eliminating poverty.

As I said in my second paragraph, welfare used to be distributed by private citizens who understood the needs of the particular people (and believe it or not, their needs do not begin and end with money). The voluntary organizations also helped a great deal in fulfilling the need of the poor and unemployed.

There are many stories of people who got off welfare and speak of it as an addiction. They say that welfare doesn’t help the people; it only compounds the problem. I tend to agree. People need other things besides money.

Have you ever wondered why Patrick Henry never ran for President? There is (believe it or not) a reason.

In the making of the Constitution, the Southerners and Northerners were disagreed (of course) on slavery. They didn’t want to make it a big issue, so they make a bad, behind the scenes, no good, shocking, sneaky, deal: no one would talk about it. All they said was that slaves would count as 3/5 of person in elections, and that no one could outlaw the importation of slaves until 1808.

This under-the-radar deal so angered George Mason and some other Christians that they left the convention. This is another reason (among others) why Patrick Henry opposed the Constitution. If he hadn’t, he could have easily won a presidential election. (Well, in my opinion).

The cotton gin hadn’t come around yet, so slavery wasn’t as firmly established in the South as it became in the 1820’s. Many people were able and willing to free their slaves if the time came. But the chance was passed up because a few men didn’t have the guts to mention the issue at the convention.