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    A Declaration of Independence From Government Incompetence

    By Michael Maiello on Tue, 07/03/2012 - 1:11pm | Politics

    Hey, guess what?  I just read The Declaration of Independence for the first time in a very long time.  It's short!  It's part of a little pocket guide, combined with the Constitution, published by the CATO Institute, given to me a few years ago and I figured, what the heck, it's that time of year.

    And what really struck me about it, now that I'm not in seventh grade is what a cautious document it is, how reasonable it is and how so many of the complaints don't have to do with taxation or acts of war and physical tyranny (many do, of course, but those get all the press) and how much of it has to do with basic complaints about governmental incompetence and what we'd now call gridlock.  For example, the King of Great Britain 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..."

    "He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People..."

    "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."

    This is about the government abdicating its responsibility to govern.  This is a document written by people who might well have kept their king if their king were a solution to their problems and not an impediment to finding solutions.  This is a group of people who would look at our current Senate filibuster, whereby no law can be passed or even fruitfully debated without a 60 vote majority as utterly insane.

    I love the idea, by the way, that the legislative powers of the people don't just go away when you dissolve the legislature.  Collectively, people always have those powers and if you take away a form of organization, they will still hold onto those powers and will still use them, perhaps just less effectively.

    Of course, things get oversimplified with time.  I half expected to pick this thing up and read some screed about taxes and the requirement to by health insurance.  Yes, there's a jaunty passage about the King's attempts to economically isolate the colonies, rendering them dependent on the Crown.  Yes, there is the complaint that the King has been "imposing Taxes without our consent."  But the vast majority of the document is about the King's utter incompetence and broken system of government.

    Basically, reading the declaration has convinced me that if today's Tea Partiers piled into a Delorean and shot back to Boston that their spiritual predecessors would toss them into the Harbor.

    Happy Fourth, Dag.

    Topics: 
    Politics

    Comments

    Yeah ok but if you're honest you have to admit there really is a lot of anti-far-off-federal government stuff in the Declaration (if not the Constitution and Bill of Rights.) You have to keep in mind that at this stage they hadn't even "federated" yet, just a coalition of individual governments quite proud in all 13 cases of being able to govern themselves in different ways according to the preferences of their citizens.

    For example this

    He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance..

    is just like the famous conservative sarcastic quip about running away when you hear I'm from the federal government and I'm here to help.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 07/03/2012 - 2:43pm

    Definitely, double A.  The Declaration doesn't embody many contemporary political philosophies and, you wouldn't expect it to.  But it seems to me that this is largely because George was a jerk.


    by Michael Maiello on Tue, 07/03/2012 - 2:48pm

    Nuance is a librul lie. The Constitution says somewhere, no healthcare for u, but definitely healthcare for me.

    But let's get real, the Declaration of Independence is a list of grievances, a letter saying King George Sucks, he is such an ass, we hate him, not only does he abdicate his responsibilities but he is taking our shit, and it is rightfully ours. They say they intend to prove by example what a sucky dude King George is:

    "To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world." Hahaha here is comes.

    And then they list why they hate his guts and why they are forced to deal with this, they even say, we've basically begged you to reform, let us be represented in the Commons and each time you brush away our concerns with the slander of tribal colonists! So we say, NO WAY, we are going to war with your ass.

    Haha, I love that letter.

     


    by tmccarthy0 on Tue, 07/03/2012 - 3:28pm

    I'd like to declare independence from the founders.

    I like a lot of the founders.  They were smart and interesting guys, well read in the philosophy and debates of the 18th Century, well-read in the political problems and upheavals that afflicted both the ancient world and the Europe of their day.  They wrote some interesting stuff.

    But here's the main thing about the founders: they're dead.  They don't live here anymore, and they haven't for a couple of centuries.  We the living have to take care of ourselves best we can, and also provide the best future we can for our children and their children.  We can't afford the idolatrous founder worship of our civil religion.


    by Dan Kervick on Wed, 07/04/2012 - 2:10am

    The Declaration also denounced George III

    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.

    What it's talking about is the Quebec Act of 1774, a British law that tried to gain the loyalty of newly conquered French-speaking Canadians, who were almost as disgruntled as residents of the 13 colonies. The act restored the French system of civil law (while keeping the British criminal code), restored the seigneurial system of land ownership, and allowed Roman Catholics to take public office without renouncing their faith. Pretty advanced stuff for the 1770s, but the bare minimum needed to keep Quebec from joining the incipient revolution down south.

    Adding territories reserved for Indians (what would later become Michigan and Ohio) to Quebec helped cement trust that Britain would keep indigenous lands from American settlement. Indians played a key role in the Revolutionary War, but paid a terrible price when Britain lost.


    by acanuck on Wed, 07/04/2012 - 3:00am