INDEPENDENCE… Myth or Reality
October 3, 2011 Posted by: Kelly Gneiting
by Kelly Gneiting
The Independent American Party;—at first look this phrase would seem conflicting. An independent American thinks independently, yet Party denotes “follow us, think the way we do, vote for our candidates, and support our mandates!” We may as well announce to every American, “All independents, depend on us!”
It is with heavy heart that one observes America’s progression since 1776 from independence to dependence. Our government would have you believe that in dependence is safety, and “the good life” in having big brother think for you. Is this what our Founders believed?
A few warnings amidst a sea of related quotes from our Founding Fathers (and like minds), say differently:
“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution” —Thomas Jefferson
“But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.” — Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837
“There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.” — Edmund Burke
Furthermore, the Declaration of Independence itself reads:
“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.”
Is dependency what our Founding Fathers envisioned? No. They understood the weakness of men to think in terms of dependence, but knew where it led, and didn’t want their children falling victim to the inevitable destruction which awaited at dependency’s full bloom.
America, haven’t we compiled a new “long train of abuses”? Consider the 16th Amendment, the 17th Amendment, the Federal Reserve, and the bottomless and blatant legalized plunder stemming from government. Consider that government has restricted religious speech, prayer, and worship which was deemed essential to our Founders; and that government now wants to tell you what to eat, when and how you can travel, and what you can travel with. Laws today have facilitated other’s right to dip into your bank account, yet have offered a solution to your poverty by dipping into other’s bank accounts on your behalf.
These methods are, as intended, wiping away the middle class and creating systems of society where the elite rule, and all others are dependent on them.
Government does not create wealth! Their sole duty is to protect unalienable rights—only! Individuals in government are actually dependent on those who DO produce wealth for the food they eat, the clothes they wear, and the shelter over their head.
Yet government has increasingly rewarded its own with higher salaries and better benefits than those who actually produce wealth (i.e. private industry). At the same time, we have gone from a society where one Federal Government employee served 8,570 people (in the 1790s), to today where one Federal Government worker serves 108 citizens.
As individual Americans, you cannot control the masses, but you can control yourself. You can declare yourself an independent American and work with other independent Americans to bring our beloved country back from dependency to independency.
Yes, this is a ‘shock’ to the American norm of today, since no one alive has experienced freedom as intended and brought about by our Founders. Yet, it is a freedom that has projected our technical, political, and economic institutions 5,000 years into the future, as expressed in Cleon Skousen’s “5000 Year Leap”:
“The spirit of freedom which moved out across the world in the 1800s was primarily inspired by the fruits of freedom in the United States. The climate of free-market economics allowed science to thrive in an explosion of inventions and technical discoveries which, in merely 200 years, gave the world the gigantic new power resources of harnessed electricity, the internal combustion engine, jet propulsion, exotic space vehicles, and all the wonders of nuclear energy… The whole earth was explored from pole to pole—even the depths of the sea.
The average length of life was doubled; the quality of life was tremendously enhanced. Homes, food, textiles, communications, transportation, central heating, central cooling, world travel, millions of books, a high literacy rate, schools for everybody, surgical miracles, medical cures for age-old diseases… All of it… did flow out primarily from the swift current of freedom and prosperity which the American Founders turned loose into the spillways of human progress all over the world. In 200 years, the human race had made a 5,000-year leap.
Independence did this, and it would behoove America and you individually, as an independent American, to aid in the cause of Independence—to bring out country back to the original intent of our Founding Fathers.
It won’t be easy, but it begins with independent Americans stepping up, as did they in the birth of our nation. As expressed in 1776:
“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.” —Thomas Paine
But those who now rule, intend to continue, and expect to win the slaves they have so painstakingly conspired to bring under their control. As expressed by Edmund Burke:
“Those who have been once intoxicated with power and have derived any kind of emolument from it can never willingly abandon it.” —Edmund Burke
This is why the War of Independence was fought. Then, the cost of Independence was blood.
In 1776, as a nation, we declared ourselves independent. Inwardly, you can do the same. In 2011 declare yourself an Independent American. Catch a vision of what this phrase means. Commit! Entrust! Commend! Pledge! Announce! Live! When you die one day, die an INDEPENDENT AMERICAN!
From John Adams, July 1, 1776:
Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there’s a Divinity which shapes our ends. . . . Why, then, should we defer the Declaration? . . . You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We may die; die Colonists, die slaves, die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold.
Be it so. Be it so.
If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready. . . . But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country.
But whatever may be our fate, be assured . . . that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood; but it will stand and it will richly compensate for both.
Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illuminations. On its annual return they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude and of joy.
Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, Independence now, and Independence forever. [The Works of Daniel Webster, 4th ed., 1:133–:36]
INDEPENDENCE… Myth or Reality
by Kelly Gneiting
It is with heavy heart that one observes America’s progression since 1776 from independence to dependence. Our government would have you believe that in dependence is safety, and “the good life” in having big brother think for you. Is this what our Founders believed?
A few warnings amidst a sea of related quotes from our Founding Fathers (and like minds), say differently:
Furthermore, the Declaration of Independence itself reads:
Is dependency what our Founding Fathers envisioned? No. They understood the weakness of men to think in terms of dependence, but knew where it led, and didn’t want their children falling victim to the inevitable destruction which awaited at dependency’s full bloom.
America, haven’t we compiled a new “long train of abuses”? Consider the 16th Amendment, the 17th Amendment, the Federal Reserve, and the bottomless and blatant legalized plunder stemming from government. Consider that government has restricted religious speech, prayer, and worship which was deemed essential to our Founders; and that government now wants to tell you what to eat, when and how you can travel, and what you can travel with. Laws today have facilitated other’s right to dip into your bank account, yet have offered a solution to your poverty by dipping into other’s bank accounts on your behalf.
These methods are, as intended, wiping away the middle class and creating systems of society where the elite rule, and all others are dependent on them.
Government does not create wealth! Their sole duty is to protect unalienable rights—only! Individuals in government are actually dependent on those who DO produce wealth for the food they eat, the clothes they wear, and the shelter over their head.
Yet government has increasingly rewarded its own with higher salaries and better benefits than those who actually produce wealth (i.e. private industry). At the same time, we have gone from a society where one Federal Government employee served 8,570 people (in the 1790s), to today where one Federal Government worker serves 108 citizens.
As individual Americans, you cannot control the masses, but you can control yourself. You can declare yourself an independent American and work with other independent Americans to bring our beloved country back from dependency to independency.
Yes, this is a ‘shock’ to the American norm of today, since no one alive has experienced freedom as intended and brought about by our Founders. Yet, it is a freedom that has projected our technical, political, and economic institutions 5,000 years into the future, as expressed in Cleon Skousen’s “5000 Year Leap”:
Independence did this, and it would behoove America and you individually, as an independent American, to aid in the cause of Independence—to bring out country back to the original intent of our Founding Fathers.
It won’t be easy, but it begins with independent Americans stepping up, as did they in the birth of our nation. As expressed in 1776:
But those who now rule, intend to continue, and expect to win the slaves they have so painstakingly conspired to bring under their control. As expressed by Edmund Burke:
This is why the War of Independence was fought. Then, the cost of Independence was blood.
In 1776, as a nation, we declared ourselves independent. Inwardly, you can do the same. In 2011 declare yourself an Independent American. Catch a vision of what this phrase means. Commit! Entrust! Commend! Pledge! Announce! Live! When you die one day, die an INDEPENDENT AMERICAN!
From John Adams, July 1, 1776: