Is It Time For a NEW Declaration of Independence & Constitution?

Let’s
start with a shocking, but true premise: If you are a patriotic
American, you believe that there are circumstances under which it is
right to take up arms against your own government. That statement feels
wrong to me. It reeks of militia and McVeigh and toothless loons holed
up with guns in cabins in order to avoid paying income taxes.

But the fact remains that the rationale for the existence of the
nation known as the United States of America, which first appeared in
print 236 years ago today, is entirely dependent on the premise that
there are indeed times “…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 that such times may require the first
group of people to “…mutually pledge to each other [their] Lives,
[their] Fortunes and [their] sacred Honor.” And that having dissolved
those political bands with another people, the newly liberated people
(“…and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy
War…”) may, among other things, protect themselves from a tyrannical
power which engages in “…a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same Object [which] evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute Despotism…”

This is the argument presented to the world by Adams, Jefferson, and
Franklin. It was adopted and approved by the Continental Congress. It
has been graphically represented in the Great Seal of the United States
and it is treated as the origin of the American Republic not just in the
Declaration of Independence itself, but also in the Constitution.

In other words the Constitution was signed in the fall of 1787, which
was during the 12th year of the United States, which places the event
which initiated the Republic sometime before September 1776. Is there
any other event, save the Declaration, which would fit the historical
bill? Of course not. And just in case any would argue, as Bork tried to
in our debate, that this is simply a matter of a date to which no
significance can be attributed, I would point out that the Great Seal of
the United States, which was the result of several years of
deliberation, labels the foundation (it is a literal architectural
foundation at the base of a pyramid) with the Roman numerals for the
year 1776. In short, the Declaration and the principles on which it is
based are the foundational ideas of our Republic. One can deny their
truth, but one cannot deny their legal authority.

This implies something very important: No governmental official can
deny the right of the people to dissolve the political bands which tie
them to a tyrannical government without at the same time denying the
Declaration and, by extension, the Constitution on which his own power
is based. If he says, “The Declaration no longer applies; you must obey
my authority no matter what.” We can rightly reply, “If the Declaration
no longer applies, then the government of which you are a part no longer
possesses legitimacy; which means you have no authority in the first
place and therefore have no right to demand that we obey.”