I wanted to wish everyone as wonderful and safe Fourth of July. Despite our economic and political woes, we remain as a people united by a common article of faith in our representative democracy. Indeed, the disgusting abuses of extremists in other part of the world like ISIS should remind us of the enduring symbol of freedom celebrated today. It is the very rights that we celebrate that are under attack by such groups who wish to replace free thought with rigid orthodoxy.
I spent the first half of the day as a timing official at a swim meet for one of the kids in the pouring rain. It looks like this will continue to be a rainy day. Since we bought an arsenal of fireworks, it could be tricky to find a clear period to set them off tonight.
The rain will not get us down. We have a house full of family and are planning to grill ribs.
Have a wonderful day and Happy Independence Day!
Only a bit out of character (??) I am making this day my day of naiveté’ 🙂 … I wish everyone the best 4th possible, both for themselves and their families & children, and I intend to be angry, or even just mildly irritated, with no one anywhere for today. I’ve seen enough strife & destruction that I need to be this way today, and to fervently believe we can and will learn to stop killing each other all over the world. For at least one day of the year and this one seems appropriate. Call it my day of Hope.
Happy 4th of July, America. Please accept this gift from the Founders:
The Preamble
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
*****
In perpetuity.
*****
Obviously, the definitive understanding of this passage will come from Prof. Turley but the literal English language words say that,
the founding documents provide America with government limited to Justice, Tranquility, Common Defence and Promote General Welfare (i.e. roads, water, utilities).
No “social engineering/population manipulation,” no “control of the means of production,” no “central planning” and no “redistribution of wealth.” The Communist Manifesto was conjured up 72 years after the Preamble precisely because it was different and it dictated collectivist principles that are mortally opposed to America’s thesis of freedom and self-reliance.
The “blessings of liberty” are freedom and free enterprise without interference by the previously limited government – “to ourselves and our posterity” not for the benefit of foreign citizens or invaders (“fundamental transformers”).
The Preamble is the essential American Context. It sets the parameters within which the Constitution provides for governance.
Professor Turley may tell us the truth of the severely limited government and total individual freedom intended by the Founders in the Preamble.
Worth repeating:
The Declaration of Independence in American
by H. L. Mencken, 1921
WHEN THINGS get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody.
All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, me and you is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain’t got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time whichever way he likes, so long as he don’t interfere with nobody else. That any government that don’t give a man them rights ain’t worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of government they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter. That whenever any government don’t do this, then the people have got a right to give it the bum’s rush and put in one that will take care of their interests. Of course, that don’t mean having a revolution every day like them South American yellow-bellies, or every time some jobholder goes to work and does something he ain’t got no business to do. It is better to stand a little graft, etc., than to have revolutions all the time, like them coons, and any man that wasn’t a anarchist or one of them I.W.W.’s would say the same. But when things get so bad that a man ain’t hardly got no rights at all no more, but you might almost call him a slave, then everybody ought to get together and throw the grafters out, and put in new ones who won’t carry on so high and steal so much, and then watch them. This is the proposition the people of these Colonies is up against, and they have got tired of it, and won’t stand it no more. The administration of the present King, George III, has been rotten from the start, and when anybody kicked about it he always tried to get away with it by strong-arm work. Here is some of the rough stuff he has pulled:
He vetoed bills in the Legislature that everybody was in favor of, and hardly nobody was against.
He wouldn’t allow no law to be passed without it was first put up to him, and then he stuck it in his pocket and let on he forgot about it, and didn’t pay no attention to no kicks.
When people went to work and gone to him and asked him to put through a law about this or that, he give them their choice: either they had to shut down the Legislature and let him pass it all by himself, or they couldn’t have it at all.
He made the Legislature meet at one-horse tank-towns, so that hardly nobody could get there and most of the leaders would stay home and let him go to work and do things like he wanted.
He give the Legislature the air, and sent the members home every time they stood up to him and give him a call-down or bawled him out.
When a Legislature was busted up he wouldn’t allow no new one to be elected, so that there wasn’t nobody left to run things, but anybody could walk in and do whatever they pleased.
He tried to scare people outen moving into these States, and made it so hard for a wop or one of these here kikes to get his papers that he would rather stay home and not try it, and then, when he come in, he wouldn’t let him have no land, and so he either went home again or never come.
He monkeyed with the courts, and didn’t hire enough judges to do the work, and so a person had to wait so long for his case to come up that he got sick of waiting, and went home, and so never got what was coming to him.
He got the judges under his thumb by turning them out when they done anything he didn’t like, or by holding up their salaries, so that they had to knuckle down or not get no money.
He made a lot of new jobs, and give them to loafers that nobody knowed nothing about, and the poor people had to pay the bill, whether they could or not.
Without no war going on, he kept an army loafing around the country, no matter how much people kicked about it.
He let the army run things to suit theirself and never paid no attention whatsoever to nobody which didn’t wear no uniform.
He let grafters run loose, from God knows where, and give them the say in everything, and let them put over such things as the following:
Making poor people board and lodge a lot of soldiers they ain’t got no use for, and don’t want to see loafing around.
When the soldiers kill a man, framing it up so that they would get off.
Interfering with business.
Making us pay taxes without asking us whether we thought the things we had to pay taxes for was something that was worth paying taxes for or not.
When a man was arrested and asked for a jury trial, not letting him have no jury trial.
Chasing men out of the country, without being guilty of nothing, and trying them somewheres else for what they done here.
In countries that border on us, he put in bum governments, and then tried to spread them out, so that by and by they would take in this country too, or make our own government as bum as they was.
He never paid no attention whatever to the Constitution, but he went to work and repealed laws that everybody was satisfied with and hardly nobody was against, and tried to fix the government so that he could do whatever he pleased.
He busted up the Legislatures and let on he could do all the work better by himself.
Now he washes his hands of us and even goes to work and declares war on us, so we don’t owe him nothing, and whatever authority he ever had he ain’t got no more.
He has burned down towns, shot down people like dogs, and raised hell against us out on the ocean.
He hired whole regiments of Dutch, etc., to fight us, and told them they could have anything they wanted if they could take it away from us, and sicked these Dutch, etc., on us.
He grabbed our own people when he found them in ships on the ocean, and shoved guns into their hands, and made them fight against us, no matter how much they didn’t want to.
He stirred up the Indians, and give them arms and ammunition, and told them to go to it, and they have killed men, women and children, and don’t care which.
Every time he has went to work and pulled any of these things, we have went to work and put in a kick, but every time we have went to work and put in a kick he has went to work and did it again. When a man keeps on handing out such rough stuff all the time, all you can say is that he ain’t got no class and ain’t fitten to have no authority over people who have got any rights, and he ought to be kicked out.
When we complained to the English we didn’t get no more satisfaction. Almost every day we give them plenty of warning that the politicians over there was doing things to us that they didn’t have no right to do. We kept on reminding them who we was, and what we was doing here, and how we come to come here. We asked them to get us a square deal, and told them that if this thing kept on we’d have to do something about it and maybe they wouldn’t like it. But the more we talked, the more they didn’t pay no attention to us. Therefore, if they ain’t for us they must be agin us, and we are ready to give them the fight of their lives, or to shake hands when it is over.
Therefore be it resolved, That we, the representatives of the people of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, hereby declare as follows: That the United States, which was the United Colonies in former times, is now a free country, and ought to be; that we have throwed out the English King and don’t want to have nothing to do with him no more, and are not taking no more English orders no more; and that, being as we are now a free country, we can do anything that free countries can do, especially declare war, make peace, sign treaties, go into business, etc. And we swear on the Bible on this proposition, one and all, and agree to stick to it no matter what happens, whether we win or we lose, and whether we get away with it or get the worst of it, no matter whether we lose all our property by it or even get hung for it.
Author’s Note
When this was reprinted in A Mencken Chrestomathy, the author added the following note:
“From THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE. THIRD EDITION, 1923, pp. 398-402. First printed, as Essay in American, in the Baltimore Evening Sun, Nov. 7, 1921. Reprinted in THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE, SECOND EDITION, 1921, pp. 388-92. From the preface thereof: ‘It must be obvious that more than one section of the original is now quite unintelligible to the average American of the sort using the Common Speech. What would he make, for example, of such a sentence as this one: “He has called together 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”? Or of this: “He has refused for a long time, after such dissolution, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise.” Such Johnsonian periods are quite beyond his comprehension, and no doubt the fact is at least partly to blame for the neglect upon which the Declaration has fallen in recent years, When, during the Wilson-Palmer saturnalia of oppressions [1918-1920], specialists in liberty began protesting that the Declaration plainly gave the people the right to alter the government under which they lived and even to abolish it altogether, they encountered the utmost incredulity. On more than one occasion, in fact, such an exegete was tarred and feathered by shocked members of the American Legion, even after the Declaration had been read to them. What ailed them was simply that they could not understand its Eighteenth Century English.’ This jocosity was denounced as seditious by various patriotic Americans, and in England it was accepted gravely and deplored sadly as a specimen of current Standard American.”
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/decind.html
Or, if reading isn’t your thing, a podcast;
http://boingboing.net/2014/07/01/h-l-mencken-translates-the-de.html
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Red Skelton’s Pledge of Allegiance
https://youtu.be/TZBTyTWOZCM
dumbest post yet…AMERICA RULES!…Happy 4th!
It is the 4th of July
An annual opportunity to spout jingosims.
===== “Democracy is great” =======
Actually it is mob rule and has devolved even further in the U.S. Now special interest groups use the Federal government to steal just about everything from the inhabitants. Money, real property , freedom of movement , freedom of entrepreneurship……….. Sure, America is better than many places …….. I just got back from Europe and America is better ……. Still …. America has been on downward spiral since the mid 1800s.
==== “Our flag Our great nation Our great military Our government Our ________ ” ==============
The word “our” implies ownership …… I do not own or control the military , the government , the nation or much of anything else …….. I do not actually own my real property as the government can seize it anytime they want on the flimsiest of legal fictions. I do not own the fruits of my labor as the IRS has repeatedly proved.
===== “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” =======
America is a police state ….it leads the world in incarceration stats, leads the world in military spending , leads the world in violent interventions , invented “trigger words” , redefined rape , has the most militarized police in the world ( or at least is tied for first place )
So to the celebrants of the 4th ….. I say bah… humbug
99guspuppet
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
It’s time for the Barbecue
And the Fireworks galore!
And the cold Beer and Friends
With the Burgers for sure!
But most important
And I really must say
Is that America got
Its Independence today!
Yes back in 1776
The famous politician
Senator John Hancock
Had signed the petition
It stated that our country
Was free from all others!
And that we would only be governed
By our American brothers!
So while we are celebrating
This great day of fun
Let us always remember
What our forefathers had done!
Happy July 4th to Esquire Turley
He never waivers in his loyalty
A man who celebrates the Constitution truly
Happy July 4th to all.
Happy 4th to you all and especially to Professor Turley for doing his best to keep elected and sometimes unelected officials true to our Constitution.
Happy Fourth of July to our host and subscribers. Here is a short video featuring Johnny Cash and That Ragged Old Flag:
https://youtu.be/LzP__H9Ykac
Happy 4th of July from sunny northern Illinois!
Happy Fourth of July Professor Turley! Ahh, yes, I too, remember sitting on the deck timing swimmers- rain or shine! Those were wonderful and fun times!
Next, thank you for your blog. It is always informative (although, a spell check might be in order, just sayin’ lol) and it most definitely invites contemplation and research on many of the issues.
Thank you, sir.
Is “representative democracy” synonymous with “Republic”?
Thank you! Happy Fourth of July, to you and yours!
I regard you as the most learned Constitutional law expert – unlike our president. Thank you for your courageous testimony before Congress re Obama’s unconstitutional executive order on immigrants. I know you must have gotten a lot of flack from other liberals. I am a progressive, too, by the way – but not a brainless go-along.
Ralph Nader referred to the prez as “King Obama” re his pushing through the TPP. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur said that if she were to disclose any of the terms of the TPP she could be criminally prosecuted . . . She actually read it. Her opinion is that it is unconstitutional and will hurt our country. Catherine Austin Fitts who interviewed Rep. Kaptur about the TPP concluded that it must be intended to destroy our economy. Rep. Kaptur did not respond. Her audio interview is on solari.com. Excellent site, for a variety of reasons and issues.
Ann Williams, U.S. Navy veteran, Pinole, CA
Well, there something fishy going on, because first, there were oldtrons, then there were newtrons, and now we have ultrons! I think it is maybe all the fluoride in the water.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Nick
Did’ja hear that, JT’s got an arsenal of fireworks?
Happy Fourth of July
1. This great nation began with the “Declaration of Independence” on 4 July 1776.
2. And finally ended 169 years later, in Oct 1945, because:
_ a.) Eighty-seven years after 1776, in 1863, President Lincoln trusted and appointed a private, self-perpetuating group of distinguished scholars to advise the government on science and technology – The National Academy of Sciences.
_ b.) Forty-nine years later, nations were united under the UN on 24 Oct 1945 and NAS spent research funds in federal research agencies to deceive the public about NEUTRON REPULSION in heavy atoms and stars in support of a worldwide “Secret Social Experiment.”
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Introduction.pdf
[The Sun’s interior was changed from iron to hydrogen in textbooks, and Aston’s valid nuclear packing fraction was replaced with von Weizsacker’s deceptive nuclear binding energy.]
3. Climategate emails in late Nov 2009 first showed many of us the sad state of government science.
4. After hearing six years of official excuses for deceptive government science, now – on 4 July 2015 – there is little or no doubt:
The National Academy of Sciences that Lincoln established in 1863 betrayed the American public about the energy in cores of heavy atoms, some planets, ordinary stars and galaxies after 1945.
Oliver
“…by such groups who wish to replace free thought with rigid orthodoxy.”
The goal of all religion, especially of the Christian ilk.
Thank you. And happy 4th to you also Mr Turley. I have been enjoying your blog for over two years now and must tell you that I’m a news junkie and the cases interest me as well but your trips, hikes and photos really fill my heart with joy. I lived in Frederick, MD for 15 years before moving to SC. We are mulling a move back to VA in the next 2-3 years for our final years. I love MD but not the taxes! Your blog is really the greatest!
Linda Lincoln
Happy Fourth! to everybody. I hope we all live to see many more! Hmmm. I’m thinking Irish Poem, here!
Go Fourth, And Multiply
A Special Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm
Oh look, it’s the Fourth of July!
We all got a tear in our eye!
That isn’t a joke,
No, it’s not from the smoke!
It’s from seeing our flag flying high!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter