. . . Put this link, among others, on your screensaver and post it near the refrigerator.  Log in more often than you do on “Facebook” and keep track of our government, unless you wish to become subject, versus citizen.

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/

This is not the committee that makes the laws, but they control the FUNDING of the laws already made.  It is possible to have a law, but not authorize any funding to enforce it.

Go to “house” go to “committees” (this one is near the bottom) and then “Hearings” to Hear what they are discussing on a regular day.  I think it’s interesting….

Now for today’s topics

(1) INDEPENDENCE & UNALIENABLE RIGHTS

Happy Independence Day.  If certain priorities don’t change, I believe this nation isn’t going to last 300 years.  Because you can only peddle myths for so long, and then bill the people (and jail them if they protest) until they find somewhere else to go, or begin to simply sit down and boycott all support of the system that oppresses.

I personally believe that women, not men, are better suited to do this.  I suggest we consider doing this BEFORE an artifical womb is invented, and I suggest we start to regain some of our self-respect (and the ability to defend ourselves and our children), such women are not so poor as to need to donate eggs, sell ourselves (or our kids) or become surrogate mothers in order to eat.  Or to have another purpose in life. 

The inalienable rights stated in the Declaration of Independence are as follows, per http://www.unalienable.com

 

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 desolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the seperate 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, (1) that all men are created equal, (2) that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (3) That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

now, perhaps you noticed that in my numbering (added, obviously), I only came up to 3.  The 3 unalienable rights are NOT (read them) “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happyness” (as per Will Smith movie, based on a true story based in my Northern CA SF Bay Area) — but they are what they say they are, each one preceded with the word “THAT.”

(1) THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL

(2) THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR (** for who these men thought that Creator to be, read below, you may be suprised) with certain unalienable rights (L, L & P), WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS. 

(3) THAT TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS (not “dispense these circumstances”) GOVERNMENTS ARE INSTITUTED AMONG MEN, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWER FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

Anyone who is concerned about the violation of those rights might do well to memorize the text from which they came.  The 4th one (I count 4, if my grammar is right), is towards the end of my post, and it is important!

Transcript of the entire Declaration of Independence

Learn the fate of the signatories

The 13 Colonies

---

Unalienable Rights – Absolute Rights – Natural Rights

The absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to acquire and enjoy property. These rights are declared to be natural, inherent, and unalienable. Atchison & N. R. Co. v. Baty, 6 Neb. 37, 40, 29 Am. Rep. 356.

By the “absolute rights” of individuals is meant those which are so in their primary and strictest sense, such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in it. The rights of personal security, of personal liberty, and private property do not depend upon the Constitution for their existence. They existed before the Constitution was made, or the government was organized. These are what are termed the “absolute rights” of individuals, which belong to them independently of all government, and which all governments which derive their power from the consent of the governed were instituted to protect. People v. Berberrich (N. Y.) 20 Barb. 224, 229; McCartee v. Orphan Asylum Soc. (N. Y.) 9 Cow. 437, 511, 513, 18 Am. Dec. 516; People v. Toynbee (N. Y.) 2 Parker, Cr. R. 329, 369, 370 (quoting 1 Bl. Comm. 123).

Chancellor Kent (2 Kent, Comm. 1) defines the “absolute rights” of individuals as the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to acquire and enjoy property. These rights have been justly considered and frequently declared by the people of this country to be natural, inherent, and inalienable, and it may be stated as a legal axiom [A principle that is not disputed; a maxim] that since the great laboring masses of our country have little or no property but their labor, and the free right to employ it to their own best interests and advantage, it must be considered that the constitutional inhibition against all invasion of property without due process of law was as fully intended to embrace and protect that property as any of the accumulations it may have gained. In re Jacobs (N. Y.) 33 Hun, 374, 378.

EXERCISE YOUR UNALIENABLE RIGHTS WITH RESPECT FOR OTHERS

AND NEVER LET GOVERNMENT DEPRIVE YOU OF THEM!

 

Now, let me talk.  I DO have a final destination & POINT in this talk (unlike  some of my other posts, written in the grip and thrall of an emotion, in an “expressive responsive output” to the latest violation of sanity (and several of the above rights), i.e., a “rant….”

Many people seem to equate Tea Party folk and Christian Conservatives with this philosophy, and assume that, given they were dead white males who owned slaves, that it was time to “take control” and “progress” and fix things.

HOWEVER, I disagree.  I recently ran across some books talking about Early American Christianity, and — reflecting on this history and my own personal experience in a number of religions “venues” — you may notice that it refers to “The laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”

I am about, at this speaking, to the point of wondering how we can prevent any and ALL churches from retaining their non-profit status until they start acknowledging that their doctrine is hostile to women.

Women are about half of humanity and mothers to the other half.

We are less prone to destroy life, seeing as we spend about 9 months (give or take) producing it to start with.  This appears to frighten and challenge men, who then have produced, apparently, an account of creation which emphasizes that it was ADAM (not Eve) from which life came, and from this point on, we have learned how to believe that the impossible and improbable is often contrary to nature, and wars should be fought to establish this against those who, well, disagree.

The fact of the matter of The Founders is that many, if not most, of them did NOT believe what mainstream Christianity now does, i.e., they were not “Trinitarians.”  Refusal to believe in this Trinity came from, to tell the truth, a rational reading of the Bible (the word ain’t in there). 

Head And Heart: American Christianities – Garry Wills – Book …

Dec 9, 2007 … Garry Wills on the two great threads of America’s religious history.

Garry Wills, one of America’s best journalists and historians of the last half-century, has always enjoyed taking familiar subjects and staring at them long and hard until they look strange and new. In “Head and Heart” he invites readers to reconsider American religious history, challenging the conventional wisdom on many issues while synthesizing much of the finest recent scholarship. It is an odd and quirky book, however, going into extremely fine detail in some areas, hurrying past others with a few casual remarks, and deviating in its last hundred pages into political polemic.

Here’s some more of this NYT review, “CITY ON A HILL.”  I feel it’s relevant, if you are patient enough to read it:

The “head” of Wills’s title is Enlightenment religion, embodied in the thoughtful but sometimes chilly deism of Washington, Jefferson and Madison. The “heart,” by contrast, is evangelicalism, to be found in America’s emotionally intense but intellectually thin revivalists, like George Whitefield before the Revolution and Charles Grandison Finney not long after. These are the great polarities of America’s religious history, and their creative conflict has contributed to America’s religious diversity and vitality, and to church-state separation. “Head” has generally been the religion of the elite and “heart” its populist counterpart under the leadership of revivalist stars like Francis Asbury, Dwight Moody, Billy Sunday and Billy Graham.

The Massachusetts Puritans of the 17th century predated both, and their shadow looms over all later episodes. They too were intensely but narrowly intellectual, agonized over the destiny of their eternal souls, sought signs and portents of the imminent Second Coming and expected regular divine intervention in their everyday lives. They thought of religious freedom and mutual tolerance not as ideals to strive for but as instruments of the Devil.

I’m not there YET, but we are approaching, fast, the topic of “Fatherhood.”

In 1660 they hanged Mary Dyer, a 40-ish mother of six, for boisterous declarations of her Quaker beliefs. A few decades later, by contrast, they made a heroine of Hannah Duston, who escaped captivity by killing 10 Indians with a hatchet, six of them children, and bringing home their scalps for a bounty.

How did we get from the Puritan ideal of zealous intolerance to a contemporary America in which no church is established and most Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and others try to coexist? By means of the Enlightenment. Wills praises the Anglo-American philosophers and statesmen of the late 17th and 18th centuries, beginning with John Locke, who advocated toleration, disestablishment and humanitarian reform, and whose influence reached its height in the era of the American Revolution.

Wills is far more heady than hearty, but he recognizes that the two need each other. Occasionally they come together perfectly; he reserves high praise for people who blended intellectual rigor, humanitarianism and evangelical zeal. Anthony Benezet (1713-84), for example, who he suggests is “the one unquestionably authentic American saint,” was a Quaker who worked out a powerful Christian case against slavery, permitting reason rather than Scripture to have the last word but warming his arguments with God’s love. Both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass exemplified the ideal combination in the Civil War era. More recently Martin Luther King Jr., long a hero to Wills, took arguments from brainy theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr but inspired grass-roots civil rights workers by adding the fiery rhetoric of African-American tradition.

Too much head or heart, unbalanced by the other, causes trouble. Wills rebukes today’s evangelicals for their intellectual feebleness. He shows that their effort to make born-again Christians out of the founding fathers is simply bad history. He dismisses their claim that creationism is a science, and he reproaches them for demonizing the social transformations of recent decades as a “secular humanist” conspiracy. A Christianity that refuses to face up to intellectual difficulties, he believes, will always render itself ridiculous.

I googled “Locke Trinity” because I don’t have my excerpt handy, telling how, although it was somewhat risky (as late as late 1600s) to confess one didn’t believe in the Pyramid in the Sky, might result in execution… 

on pg. 125 of Head and Heart, I read:

“Once men recoiled from emotional excess, they looked more carefully at how reason could be used to guide religion into more acceptable paths.  One of the first tasks they gave reason was to conclude, with Locke, against the Trinity, that “the extience of more than one God is contrary to reason.” (footnoted in the quote).

“Unitarianism had, in the seventeenth century, been the secret creed of leading intellectuals like Milton, Newton, and Locke.  They had to keep their views to themselves, since denial fo the Trinity had been a heresy that led to execution between 1548 and 1612, and it was still condemned in the 1689 Act of Toleration.  In America, too, men were cautious in revealing their opposition to the Trinity….”

 Benjamin Franklin going to France, acted like Quakers, who Voltaire admired. . Voltaire, bringing Franklin to a meeting in London, and (I think BF) wrote:. . “Women as well as men can speak in the Spirit.  There is no hierarchy, priesthood, or ceremonial liturgy.  This is a life close to nature, with none of the artifical distinctions created by human striving after power.”

(No wonder Quakers, though now well-accepted are not running the Tea Party, or really considered Mainstream Christianity…  They’re not warlike enough!)

You see, if a religion simply defies reason, reading, and common sense, it WILL take a lot of force (and institutions to force it) as well as MONEY to keep it going decade after century after decade…  And it will result in wars and bloodshed, transfer of wealth, and takeover of institutions. 

One of those institutions taken over by a mistake in judgment of those seeking a real conservative person (versus “pluralist”) was Princeton. On page 132, (Head and Heart) we learn that  the Calvinists (more austere, and with the philosophy that man was innately bad and should be harshly disciplined, etc.) the trustees wanted a good “Calvinist” for Princeton.  Not having the internet back then, they didn’t know their prime choice,

JOHN WITHERSPOON

had changed, and had gone “enlightenment” (for comparison this would be like some woman, thinking Warren Farrell was still a feminist, and hiring him to represent her in a custody ligation case).  Only this wasn’t a case, it was the running of Princeton!

“(Witherspoon) lost little time of ridding Princeton of its New Light (think, neo-con fundie) faculty members, and … (in short, became real pluralist).  Witherspoon trained much of the founding generation, which made him the msot influential educator in American history.  (GET THIS:):  A list of those who passed under his tutelage is astounding:

Among these were 12 members of the Continental Congress, 5 delegates to the Constitutional Convention; 1 U.S. President (Madison), a vice President (the notorious Aaron Burr); 49 US reps, 28 US senators, 3 Supreme Court justices, 8 US district judges, 1 secretary of state, 3 attorneys general, and 2 foreign ministers.  In addition to these national officeholders, 26 of Witherspoons’ graduates were state judges, 17 were members of their state constitutional conventions, and 14 were delegates to the state conventions that ratified the Constitution {{FN 35, and I abbreviated my transcript of the quote}}.

Like I said, those trustees who had hoped to make Princeton promote more conservative and traditionall Christian theocracy, really messed up!  They’re still backpedaling from that screwup — slaves got the vote, women got the vote, a Bill of Rights and a Constitution exist now!

{{NOTE — isn’t this stuff interesting?  If they’d had this in my history textbooks during high school, I’d have been awake more of the classtime.  Still graduated at the top of the class, sleeping — that should tell us something.  It was a public school in a suburban area, too}}

Tolerance and reason, and an insistence on due process, shouldn’t mess with the minds of anyone except people who wish to impose their religion on others at the others’ expense, and continually degrade one sector of humanity (the “THEMS of the world” to support the other-worldly discourses on the fine points of the USes who rule it.

I told you, I’m getting around to the theme of “Fatherhood.” 

This site talks about Locke, Reason, Tolerance (and Unitarianism):

John Locke on Reason and Faith

The 17th Century Background of American Unitarianism

© by Dr. Jan Garrett

Slightly modified: March 8, 2007

John Locke

My main focus in this talk is the religious ideas of John Locke (1632-1704). Locke is well-known as the founder of the philosophy which John Stuart Mill later named empiricism. Locke is also well-known as a political thinker whose views on rights to life, liberty and property are influential today. What is not so well known is that Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1689, has a lot to say concerning the relation between reason and faith.

Locke a Unitarian

It is even less well known that in his later years, Locke was a unitarian. Professor Nicholas Woltsterstorff, who is not a Unitarian, defends this claim in a recent publication. So did Herbert McLachlan, principal of the Manchester (England) Unitarian College, who gave the conclusion of his book The Religious Opinions of Milton, Locke and Newton (1941) the title “Milton, Locke, Newton and Other Unitarians.” (2) McLachlan writes, “The evidence, direct and indirect, is conclusive. John Locke was a Unitarian; cautious, conservative and scriptural; in all three respects resembling most Unitarians [before the nineteenth century]” (107).(3)

Formally, Locke belonged to the dominant Anglican Church, but within the Anglican Church, he was an advocate of the broad church, or latitudinarianism. The broad church held that all that was required to belong to the Church was that you believed what Jesus taught about God and human salvation.

=============

Perhaps you are wondering how I’m relating this to “Fatherhood” and the First Amendment, here. per LII (Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School).  ONe might think that any and all legislators, and all judges, might be able to recite ALL of the Bill of Rights by memory to each other, and I would heartily recommend anyone approaching a court of law (or breathing in USA) to review, and commit to memory, these rights….

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances

Now I’m going to offend some more people.  Too bad.

FATHERHOOD IS A RELIGION PROCEEDING FROM THE LESS, NOT THE MORE, TOLERANT FOUNTS OF STRAIGHT MONOTHEISTIC RELIGION BASED ON THE OLD TESTAMENT, CHIEF OF WHICH IS THE GENESIS STORY, WHICH (AT THIS POITN IN TIME) I CAN ONLY EQUATE AS HAVING PROCEDED FROM A VERY DISTURBED BY THE AMAZING POWER OF CONCEPTION & BIRTH POINT OF VIEW.  I SAY THIS AS STILL A ‘CHRISTIAN” AND WISH TO NOTE THAT JESUS, UNLIKE HIS COHORTS, TREATED WOMEN WELL.  AMONG OTHERS WHO MODELED THEIR LIVES AFTER JESUS (and others) ARE GHANDI, AND MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

I REMIND US, FYI, THAT ALL 3 OF THEM WERE ASSASSINATED, AND QUITE POSSIBLY EXACTLY BECAUSE THEIR WORLD VIEWS UPSET THE STATUS QUO, WHICH INCLUDED SLAVERY, SEXISM, AND GOVERNMENT (ROMAN) AND RELIGIOUS  (PER THE ACCOUNT, JEWISH) INSTITUTIONAL OPPRESSION.

  PERHAPS THIS IS AN INDICATOR.

and I have been rethinking these models in what we can do about the warlike and irrational, reptilian-brain based religion of “fatherhood.” 

As follows:

(MAIN TESTIMONY, PANEL 1, Hon. David Hansell)

 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings/Testimony.aspx?TID=8678

Testimony By The Honorable Milton C. Lee Jr.

Magistrate Judge

Superior Court of the District of Columbia

Testimony By Ronald Mincy Ph.D.

Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice Columbia University School of Social Work, New York, New York

Testimony By Kirk E. Harris Ph.D.Facilitator

National Fatherhood Leaders Group

Chicago, Illinois

(and so forth):

===================

President Obama, after all, is a prime example of the hazards of growing up fatherless:

Many statistics underscore the importance of addressing fatherhood in America:

• In 2007, 40 percent of all births in America were to unwed women

1

• 1 out of every 3 children in America lives apart from his or her father

2

 

• 1 out of every 4 children in this country, and 1 in 2 poor children, participates in the child support program

3

 

• In 2008, 43 percent of children living in single mother families were poor

4

 

President Obama, who grew up without his father, has spoken eloquently about the critical importance of responsible fatherhood.

 

 

 

 

This shlock is about 15 years old, and dates back to proclamations by Wade Horn, George Bush, Bill Clinton (1995) and proclamations by the United States Congress and House of Reps in 1998 & 1999 (I believe all are on my blogroll to the right, if you hunt) about how HORRIBLE it is that children wake up in homes without their biological fathers in them.

I think we should put some of this into more specific terms, rather than anecdotal.  Are your social services, libraries, transportation, welfare, and other things being cut back (I know mine are).  Is California, and the nation BROKE?  (sound like fundamentalism to you?).  Are your courts being closed?  Did you hear about THIS on your evening news?

In the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA), Congress established a five-year, $150 million per year grant program for Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood. Of this amount, Congress allocated up to $50 million per year for Responsible Fatherhood programs, the focus of my testimony today. In 2006, ACF awarded almost 100 five-year grants to public and private organizations to promote responsible fatherhood with a focus primarily on improving parenting skills. ACF awarded these funds on a competitive basis to States, territories, Indian tribes and ( so forth)….

 

 

 

Dugard’s kids woke up with their (bio) father in their home, and it’s costing California $20 million in settlement, too!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/02/jaycee-dugard-kidnap-compensation-california

California to pay $20m compensation to kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard

State agrees payout for woman held captive for nearly 20 years by man parole officials were supposedly monitoring…..

Phillip Garrido, is accused of kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, holding her captive for nearly 20 years and fathering her two children. Photograph: Reuters

A woman held captive for nearly two decades by a rapist out on parole will receive $20m (£13.2m) from the state of California for her ordeal, during which she bore two children to the man whom officials were supposedly monitoring.

Politicians approved the settlement yesterday for Jaycee Dugard, now 30, and her two daughters, who reappeared last August after being held in a secret backyard by a suspect identified by authorities as Phillip Garrido.

“It is compensation for three people for the rest of their lives who have been horribly damaged over a period of 17 or 18 years,” mediator Daniel Weinstein said.

Dugard and her daughters, aged 15 and 12, filed claims in February, saying state parole agents began supervising Garrido in 1999 but did not discover them.

The Dugard family members claimed psychological, physical and emotional damages.

“I can’t emphasise enough that we’ve got to be much more prudent in terms of how we provide oversight for released prisoners in the state of California,” assemblyman Ted Gaines said. 

THE 4th UNALIENABLE RIGHT:

(4) —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.

Not even the best of documents is free from categorizing other forms of humanity as “other.”

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.

They spoke of a Prince.  Every prince has princely associates and offices attending.  We had better watch the “nationalization” of USA where all important decisions (and funds) stem primarily from “Washington, D.C.”  Let’s remember who is funding Washington DC, and that some/many of these funds come from working people who pay taxes. 

I am not advocating to refuse to pay just taxes, but I AM advocating we remember that those rights were declared to be “UNALIENABLE” and they most certainly are & were then, VALUABLE.