....erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
....kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
....affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
....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.
How much more pissed off would you get if someone was.....
....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.
And who would you be?
Would you be a modern-day Iraqi, Afghan, or a Colonial subject of King George III in the last part of the 18th century? I think it describes all 3.
Read it for yourself at http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm then tell me the America of today isn't guilty of exactly the same things that spurred a handful of brave and wealthy elites (for that's really what they were) to revolt against their oppressor.
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"For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic."
John F. Kennedy, Yale Commencement address, 1962 (http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03Yale06111962.htm)
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