Yesterday, the United States of America celebrated 230 years of existence. In 1776, the American colonies, cast off the shackles of tyranny and oppression when they adopted the Declaration of Independence, that declaration, however, would be meaningless if victory wasn’t secured on the battlefield. With Cornwallis’s surrender in 1781, independence was all but assured as the British Parliament called for an end to hostilities. At the time, the revolution was not particularly popular, roughly 1/3rd of the American public supported the cause of independence, while most Americans either remained loyal to George III or harbored no position one way or the other, nonetheless the patriots persevered, securing freedom for themselves and descendents.
Sadly, today most American haven’t the foggiest clue of what those early patriots were fighting for nor what failure would have meant, in that ignorance lies the understanding of the increasing government intrusion upon our personal liberties in the present day.
At the time of the revolution, Americans were angry over an ever growing tax burden. Efforts by Parliament to pay off the staggering war debt from the French and Indian War led to a series of new laws that placed previously unheard of financial strains on the colonists or somehow undercut domestic industry or personal liberty. Efforts like the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, and Tea Act sparked the ire of many colonists who soundly objected to such government interference without parliamentary representation. In reality these and other more intrusive government acts, such as the Coercive Acts (known as the Intolerable Acts in the colonies), hardly differed from the treatment of subjects in the mother country. In reality the colonial tax burden remained one of the lowest in the world and many British subjects in England did not have direct parliamentary representation either (and would not for a century or more).
Today our repression is far greater with an ever growing tax burden and a government bent on total authority with regard to our financial, social and spiritual existence. Today even our right to property is in question, yet most Americans ignore such intrusions or call on the government to increase its involvement in the daily lives of citizens. With an increasingly corrupt Congress that has no problem in violating the very Constitution they are sworn to uphold in order to rubber stamp one pay raise after another, or frequent revelations of domestic spying, eminent domain abuse, mismanagement of public funds through the farce of Social Security and countless other intrusions, it is very likely that the founders of this nation would not recognize the modern United States. Comparatively, yes we are free, when compared with other bastions of socialism, tyranny or modern fascist regimes, but we have a long way to go to secure the freedoms that so many Americans have fought and died for.
