An Equation For The Fourth Of July

from Campaign For Liberty:

An Equation for the Fourth of July


By Becky Akers

View all 12 articles by Becky Akers

Published 07/03/10



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So how will you celebrate this day that marks one of mankind's most monumental achievements: his shucking of government's shackles as he struggled from his knees to his feet? Will you shuffle into your city's tax-supported park between lines of cops who search your belongings without a warrant -- oh, the danger when a suburbanite wields a bottle of beer! -- then sit where they decree while the fireworks we buy them wait as subserviently as taxpayers for their commands?



Or do you crave something a bit more radical? If so, try reading the Declaration of Independence.



Yep, all 1337 words of it. From the heading ("In Congress, July 4th, 1776. . .") through the charges against the State ("He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their substance") to the signatures (". . .Roger Sherman, Sam.l Huntington, Wlm Williams, Oliver Wolcott, Matthew Thornton"). Aloud, no less. With family and friends around the embers of your barbecue.



We usually alternate with our guests, each of us reading a few sentences. We savor the majestic cadence of the prose ("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"), its sheer beauty ("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"). Keep a hankie handy, because Jefferson's clarion call to freedom will move you to tears.



The wise host also has some beds ready: the Declaration is so provocative, so germane to our troubles, that the discussion it sparks may well turn dinner guests into overnight ones. Do we not also suffer from our rulers' "Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us"? We call them "cops" rather than "soldiers," but otherwise what's the difference? And as did King George III's administration, modern politicians "protect" those Tasering troops "by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States." Who can read "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people" without remembering the Feds' collusion with BP and other corporations, Waco's incineration, the 2.3 million Americans languishing behind bars to enrich the prison-industrial complex? Most certainly the government has "impos[ed] Taxes on us without our Consent"; worse, it hides such wickedness behind the Federal Reserve's inflation. And though DC hasn't yet "suspend[ed] our" state "Legislature[s]," it might as well, for it obviously supposes itself "invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever."



Read the signatures that conclude the Declaration slowly. Give each patriot his due. Consider what it would cost you to sign a public resolution vowing to overthrow the criminals on the Potomac. Heck, if cops harass a guy with a sign reading "Abort Obama, not the unborn" because he's "threatening," how large a SWAT team would surround the homes of any such signatories now? Though neither as cowardly nor as paranoid as modern politicians, George III knew rebellion when he sniffed it. John Hancock, the Lees, Carter Braxton, George Clymer, Caesar Rodney, John Morton -- all realized the Declaration was a suicide pact. And they signed anyway because life isn't so dear, nor peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.



Defying the world's most powerful government, defending liberty from its fearsome army, ought to be exciting enough for anyone. The Signers' valor needs no augmenting. But that hasn't diminished the popularity of a novella entitled "The Price They Paid" that surfaces every year around this time. Its author spurned such mundane facts as the correct spelling of his heroes' names (Lewis Morris of New York becomes "Norris," South Carolina's Edward Rutledge receives an extra "T") and their actual fates: "Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or the hardships of the Revolutionary War."



In reality, the British Army did capture a few of the Signers as well as a couple of sons, but it took them in battle, as prisoners of war, not because of autographs on the Declaration. Nor did it execute them, as our fanciful author implies. Indeed, not a single Signer died of wounds the Redcoats inflicted -- though Button Gwinnett of Georgia did succumb to those from a duel. A few lost homes or valuables to plundering, official or otherwise, but so did thousands of other Americans in the Redcoat's endless quest to feed or enrich himself.



Our writer's on firmer ground when he speaks of torture, though not as he means it. But what word better describes the atrocities POWs then endured? So many men fought for freedom that the buildings the Redcoats converted to prisons for those they captured filled to bursting; the Army eventually anchored ships in New York's bay to hold the overflow.



We with our antibacterial soap and hot showers, air-conditioning, three squares a day, and flush toilets, cannot comprehend the suffering these jails inflicted. Those ashore were so drafty inmates froze to death in winter. The ones at sea became floating ovens in mildly warm weather, let alone under summer's sun: the British nailed their portholes shut to prevent escape, cutting small holes in the sides instead. The heat and airlessness magnified the stench of unwashed bodies and rags, vomit, diarrhea, urine-soaked wood, blood, suppurating wounds, and decaying flesh, whether of rats or men (the darkness below decks could conceal the dead for days).



Contagions raged on land and sea, decimating men already weak from sparse, spoiled rations: bread infested with insects and worms; a puny portion of salted but nonetheless rotten meat; filthy, brackish water. The guards who presided over these horrors were as brutal and corrupt as you might expect. Historians estimate that the prison ships alone killed around 11,000 men.



It is these patriots, in prison or the Continental Army (where privations were almost as severe), or even free but starving because British quartermasters had commandeered their harvest, whose blood, sweat, and anguish authenticated the Declaration. Because of them, delegates could assemble in Philadelphia and draft the document. It was their tens of thousands of "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" that were the Declaration's sine qua non; anonymous Americans' dedicating that trio to liberty allowed 56 more famous Signers to so grandly offer theirs. Without the average man's emotional and physical support, the Declaration would have been an inspiring but empty gesture soon forgotten.



Few of us will ever enjoy so signal a privilege as fell to the Signers; few of us will ever strike so memorable and storied a blow for liberty. But we can pledge ourselves to freedom as did a million obscure but indispensable Revolutionary Americans. Like them, we can utterly reject the State. If its oppression, corruption and cruelty sicken us as it did them, if we withdraw our approval as they did theirs, government will wither and die without our ever firing a shot.



The State depends on consent. Even the most repressive regimes could not rage without acquiescence from their subjects. The ratio of willing or apathetic residents to rebels necessary for overthrowing rulers will vary according to circumstances; generally, the more heavily armed the police or soldiers and the more tyrannical the administration, the larger the number of insurgents required before a revolt can succeed. But once a population reaches that critical mass, once they begin laughing at politicians and their nonsense -- "We're here to help! We serve the public by taxing you and bossing you around!" -- once enough folks realize that government is nothing more than brute, physical force, it will go the way of cavemen and loincloths.



Indeed, government survives only because we fall for its propaganda and mistake it for a friend. No wonder the State skulks behind marble monuments, fluttering flags, and emotional rhetoric about patriotism and civic duty: these camouflage its evil essence of force. Whatever form it takes, however totalitarian or democratic, all government is basically the same. It depends on violence to accomplish its purposes. Behind every law and regulation lurks physical force -- lethal force ultimately.



It doesn't matter how well-intentioned, universally accepted, or established those laws and regulations are, either: all threaten the disobedient with death. For example, a man who neglects to pay his town or city for permission before adding a room to his house will be fined and ordered to tear the addition down. If he refuses to comply, the city will send a wrecking crew. If he tries to stop the bulldozer, cops will restrain him. Depending on how vehemently he defends his property, they may kill him.





Liberty is the State's diametric opposite; it is the absence of force, i.e., of government. Free people live as they see fit. They build however and whatever suits them on their property without purchasing a bureaucrat's permission. They buy and sell anything they please to anyone they please at any time they please. They hire whomever they consider best for the job, however they define "best," at the wages on which they and their employees -- and no one else -- agree. They educate their children -- or not -- in the subjects they select. They eat without health czars hectoring them to avoid salt, fat, and sugar.



Does a perfect world result? No. Free people will sometimes make disastrous decisions (blessedly, though, when they lack a politician's power to foist their foolishness on the rest of us, they alone bear the consequences). People will still fall sick and die young; tornadoes will still demolish homes; drunks and dopers will still destroy themselves. But illness will devastate fewer victims when government can't prohibit companies from developing and marketing drugs; insurance companies will indemnify more people for their losses when laws no longer shelter them from dissatisfied customers; and the hopelessness, despair and poverty of public housing that drive so many residents to drugs and alcohol will no longer ruin lives since such projects won't exist. Liberty doesn't create utopia, just the conditions that enable the greatest number of people to enjoy the most peace and prosperity.



Tragically, not everyone wants peace and prosperity. Sure, everyone desires such invaluable benefits for himself, but some folks begrudge them to others. These sociopaths generally become politicians and bureaucrats. Rather than prospering through their own hard work, they leech off ours. Astoundingly, they assume this makes them wiser and superior to us and that they may therefore manage our lives.



Even more astoundingly, some of us agree. These lapdogs always give government the benefit of the doubt; they assume its minions are morally and factually correct while the poor citizen caught in their crosshairs can't possibly be. Understanding this helps us recognize these sycophants and their balderdash wherever they lurk, whether they're historians who praise "activist" presidents and the Supreme Court or economists who want the kleptomaniacs in office not only printing money but also "running" the economy. These toadies worship violent force, though they're careful to call it "power," because it seems an easy way to change the world. And it is: compelling people at gunpoint changes everything -- for the worse.



From the equation "government = force," we learn why the State is inept, why it is never the answer to any problem: in a sophisticated civilization, brute force isn't good for much beyond ripping up cement sidewalks. The formula also explains government's inherent, inevitable corruption: men who don't scruple to intimidate their neighbors won't scruple to extort wealth. Expecting government to be either competent or honest expects what never was and never can be. Meanwhile, look for its force to become benevolent about the time other thieves' does.



For all their brilliance, the Founding Fathers believed they could harness this force. They thought a system of checks and balances would control it so that it would protect, not pulverize, our rights.



Can we succeed where they didn't?







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