independence | Tom Mullen Talks Freedom

In a few days, Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. There will be fireworks, concerts, speeches, and millions of backyard barbecues.

But what precisely are we celebrating?

Most Americans know that on July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, explaining why the colonies were “dissolving the political bands” connecting them to Great Britain. Far fewer know that the actual act of separation took place two days earlier, when Congress approved Richard Henry Lee’s resolution declaring the colonies “free and independent States.”

More importantly, few Americans understand what those words meant.

Today, when we hear the phrase “the United States,” we naturally think of a single nation. But in 1776, the word “state” meant what we would today call a country. The Declaration itself says that the former colonies possessed “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.”

In other words, Congress did not create one new nation on July 2. It declared thirteen separate states—Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the others—to be sovereign political communities possessing the same powers as Great Britain, France, or Spain.

Seven years later, Great Britain itself recognized this reality in the Treaty of Paris:

“His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States.”

This is quite different from the story most Americans have in mind when they celebrate Independence Day.

Most Americans believe that a new nation (not thirteen new nations) was created that day. Politicians will likely confuse the matter even further with sophisms like “the birth of our democracy.” Democracy is not mentioned in any of the founding documents.

Now, it would be dishonest not to recognize that the Founders intended more than thirteen separate states. According to Thomas Jefferson’s autobiography, they moved directly on to the Articles of Confederation, defining something more than an alliance but far less than a monolithic nation state. According to the Articles, it was “a confederation.” The Articles describe the relationship as “a firm league of friendship” that agreed to delegate certain powers to a federal government, leaving all others to the individual states.

This is not just an academic point. It was the kind of relationship the colonists argued was their proper one to the British Empire before leaving it. In his A Summary View of the Rights of British America, Jefferson argued that the colonies were subject to the king but not to Parliament. As far as internal matters, including taxation, were concerned, only the local colonial governments had any legitimate authority. The king’s authority was limited to foreign policy and regulating trade.

We still call the government in Washington DC “the federal government,” but have lost the meaning of the word. A federal government governs a federation, not a nation. But the government in Washington DC acts as a national government in all but name.

Again, this is no mere pedantry. We are still arguing today over who makes rules over issues like abortion, gun regulation, and drugs. The Constitution leaves all these issues to the states, but since the early twentieth century progressives, both liberal and conservative, have used the Supreme Court to “discover” those powers in the Constitution, mostly through spurious readings of the Bill of Rights.

But the spirit of ’76 was to leave all such matters to local governance, not decided by supposed elites in a distant capital. And Washington DC is literally as distant to many U.S. states as London was in 1776 and culturally much more so to almost all of them.

Then, there is “our democracy.” The reason you don’t find the word democracy in the Declaration or the Constitution is that the Founders did not envision a government that did any mythical “will of the people” or “will of the majority.” Rather, the purpose of government according to the Declaration was to secure the inalienable rights of the individual.

Modern Americans often speak of “our democracy” as though elections determine what government ought to do. The Founders viewed matters differently. Elections were not intended to determine the purpose of government. That purpose was already fixed. The role of government was to secure the rights of individuals. Elections merely determined who would exercise the limited powers delegated for that end.

Read the rest at The Libertarian Institute…

Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupidand Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?

TAMPA, July 5, 2013 – Thank goodness the 4th of July is over. For those who believe in freedom, it has become unbearable.

On July 4th, 1776, a written document codifying the resolution passed two days earlier was approved by Congress. It declared to the whole world that thirteen of Great Britain’s colonies were seceding from the union. The document stated the Lockean principles upon which the decision was based and then listed the reasons why secession was necessary.

The modern U.S. government is far worse than George III’s. Today’s Americans not only fail to object, but celebrate its depravity.

Unqualified worship of the military is the most obvious example. Throughout human history, standing armies in times of peace have been the most recognizable characteristic of tyranny.

The 21st-century U.S. government and media invites Americans to thank the military for what little freedom they have left. Despite the complete absence of any cause-effect relationship between U.S. military adventures and the smattering of freedom Americans retain, they enthusiastically comply.

And where is this freedom the government supposedly secured by invading Korea or Afghanistan?

The “irony of the flag-waving masses slouching along in airport lines toward their inevitable date with the total state so that they could celebrate their liberty and freedom” was not lost on Daniel McAdams, but likely is on most Americans. Just watch them laugh and joke with government agents who literally bark orders at them before searching them without probable cause or a warrant.

It’s not just the airport. Any clear-thinking person recognizes the various domestic police forces as an army of occupation, complete with body armor, assault weapons and tanks. Yet, most Americans believe there are not enough of these “swarms of officers to harass our people and eat their substance.” This despite the U.S. having the largest prison population in human history, twice the size of present-day China’s, China’s population being five times as large.

The Constitution assumes law enforcement officers cannot even be trusted to arrest the right person after he has committed a crime. It requires them to get written permission from a judge to do anything. That concept is completely lost on most Americans, who teach their children police officers are their friends and their orders should be obeyed, whether they have been directed by a judge to issue them or not.

The entire paradigm of police officers patrolling the streets and supposedly “preventing crime” is completely antithetical to the principles of 1776. As Anthony Gregory observes, “Although there was plenty to object to in colonial law and law in the early republic, police as we now know them didn’t exist back then.” Nevertheless, conservatives are this institution’s biggest proponents. These are the “small government” people.

The colonists complained that George III’s army was insulated “from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.” William Grigg’s blog has documented thousands of examples of the very same tyranny in 21^st-century America.

The Declaration cited “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences” and “depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury.” That referred to trying American colonists in public courts in England, sometimes by a judge instead of a jury. Today, the U.S. government transports its subjects to secret prisons all over the world without even bothering to charge them with a crime.

Or, they might just decide to summarily execute you and save the time and trouble.

Modern Americans hold up as heroes the presidents who have helped build this Orwellian nightmare. They revere those who have presided over massive expansions of government power and took their country into hugely destructive and largely unnecessary wars, while dismissing those who presided over relatively free and peaceful periods as “postage stamps.”

Worse yet, they dutifully join the government’s propaganda machine in engaging in the “two minute hate” against Edward Snowden, uncritically parroting the government’s charges of treason, even though no reasonable person could believe what he did constituted “levying War against them [the United States – plural], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

Charged with the same crime George III charged Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin with, for resisting substantively the same tyranny, 21^st-century Americans side with the government that spies on them, routinely lies to them, plunders their wealth, controls every aspect of their lives and kills hundreds of thousands of civilians in undeclared wars.

As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe observed, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

This has never been truer than in 21^st-century America on the 4^th of July. Thank God it’s over.

Libertarianism, anyone?

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.