Mountain Views News          Saturday, June 30, 2012

B2

THE DECLARATION

 Mountain Views News Saturday June 30, 2012

A Word From Our Publisher & Editor:

236 YEARS LATER 
AND.........

The Declaration of Independence: 

A TRANSCRIPTION

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political 
bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, 
the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a 
decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which 
impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by 
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit 
of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving 
their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government 
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to 
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers 
in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 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.-
-Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which 
constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King 
of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the 
establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to 
a candid world.

He 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, unless 
suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has 
utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless 
those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable 
to them and formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the 
depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with 
his measures. 

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.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the 
Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations 
hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing 
Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount 
and payment of their salaries.

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

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has 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 benefits 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.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against 
us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our 
people. 

He is 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.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their 
Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their 
Hands. 

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the 
inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an 
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: 
Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character 
is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time 
to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have 
reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed 
to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common 
kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and 
correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, 
therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold 
the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, 
Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, 
do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and 
declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; 
that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection 
between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free 
and Independent States, they have 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. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine 
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.


The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in 
the positions indicated:

Column 1

Georgia:

 Button Gwinnett

 Lyman Hall

 George Walton

Column 2

North Carolina:

 William Hooper

 Joseph Hewes

 John Penn

South Carolina:

 Edward Rutledge

 Thomas Heyward, Jr.

 Thomas Lynch, Jr.

 Arthur Middleton

Column 3

Massachusetts:

John Hancock

Maryland:

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Column 4

Pennsylvania:

 Robert Morris

 Benjamin Rush

 Benjamin Franklin

 John Morton

 George Clymer

 James Smith

 George Taylor

 James Wilson

 George Ross

Delaware:

 Caesar Rodney

 George Read

 Thomas McKean

Column 5

New York:

 William Floyd

 Philip Livingston

 Francis Lewis

 Lewis Morris

New Jersey:

 Richard Stockton

 John Witherspoon

 Francis Hopkinson

 John Hart

 Abraham Clark

Column 6

New Hampshire:

 Josiah Bartlett

 William Whipple

Massachusetts:

 Samuel Adams

 John Adams

 Robert Treat Paine

 Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:

 Stephen Hopkins

 William Ellery

Connecticut:

 Roger Sherman

 Samuel Huntington

 William Williams

 Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire:

 Matthew Thornton


SUSAN HENDERSON

 Often before writing 
an article on a holiday, 
I will look over other 
columns to see what was 
on my mind at the time. 
I knew what I wanted to 
say today, but I followed 
my habits and looked 
at the last six July 4th 
columns I had written. 
One of them, written 
just last year, really was 
disconcerting. It starts 
out, “Well, it’s America’s 
Birthday and hopefully 
we are getting wiser as we get older right? I don’t 
think so. Right now this country is in a mess.” 

 Those words still hold true today and that is 
not good. Then, and now, I was not speaking of 
the economy which is actually better than it was 
last year, but rather speaking of our “inability to 
stop acting so sophomorically when it comes to 
everything else in our society”.

 Every day we seem to become less civilized in 
our dealings with each other, especially when it 
comes to idealogical differences.

 I have watched with great dismay the level 
of respect that we have for those who think 
differently than we do deteriorate rapidly. 
However, isn’t that supposed to be one of 
the premises that we will be celebrating on 
‘Independence Day’?

Somehow along the way, we have decided that 
our freedom also gave us the right to be mean 
spirited, vile and reckless. We have elected 
officials who stand before the media and 
disrespect the President of The United States, in 
a manner that has never been done before.

 We have talking heads (the Beavis kind), that 
demonize everyone that has a thought that is 
different from theirs. And we are getting ready for 
an election, fueled with money from God knows 
who, that will spend little time on discussing the 
differences between the candidates and their 
approach to governing. Instead we will hear the 
non-stop personal attacks intended to distract 
us.

 What exactly have we learned in 236 years? 
Not very much. A little research will let you 
know that the 56 signers of the Declaration of 
Independence did not agree on every aspect of 
how to establish this nation. BUT, they did have 
a common goal of trying to make this a better 
place. And because of that common goal, they 
worked through their diferrences and came up 
with a foundation that still serves the country 
pretty well today.

 We cannot sit back and point fingers when we 
see others acting out. When we do, we are just as 
guilty. Some ministers will tell you that there is 
no ‘big or little’ sin and that the sin of omission is 
just as great as the sin of commission. Therefore, 
we all have a duty to discourage bad behavior.

 Our society is rapidly becoming very McCarthy 
like. Remember him? Although he was on a 
specific witch hunt, ‘today the term is used more 
generally in reference to demagogic, reckless, 
and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as 
public attacks on the character and/or patriotism 
of political opponents’.

 We saw what that kind of behavior did in the 
50’s. And we saw or learned what such behavior 
did in Europe prior to that. So why in the world 
are we tolerating the rapid proliferation of trash, 
burn and destroy politics at every level just 
because one is different or thinks differently?

 I have been blessed to have friends from every 
walk of life. Right here in Sierra Madre I have 
good friends who are at the opposite spectrum 
politically. They range from the extreme right, 
tea partiers, atheists, extreme leftists and more. 
But we have the utmost respect for each other 
and can accept the fact that we are different.

 I started this piece out noting that it was 236 
years later and....well, sadly, it’s 236 years later 
and we still haven’t learn that we can make 
this country a better place if we learn to work 
together. 

 So, think about that on Wednesday and think 
about what you can do to change the discourse, 
even if its’ only one person.

 During the last Sierra Madre council race, I 
interviewed one of the candidates and asked 
why, when given to opportunity to publicly, 
and peacefully, stop an unneccessary attack on 
himself, he failed to address the issue. It would 
have been a perfect opportunity to set a good 
example to others. His answer was, “Well, I 
guess I just didn’t think about it”. And therein 
lies one of the problems that we are letting 
destroy this country. As individuals, when 
given the opportunity to change the tone of the 
discourse, we just don’t think about it. That’s a 
problem that will destroy the country faster that 
a falling stock market.

 Yes, we are 236 years old, but we are acting as 
though we haven’t learned a thing from the past.

 Have a happy holiday.

Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com