A reminder

Dear Charlie,

This Spring, we visited the site of the surrender at Yorktown, where the British Army were defeated by the Continental forces lead by Generals Washington and Rochambeau in 1781. It was the sixth year of the Revolutionary War which gave the United States its birth. We walked through the museum at Yorktown to talk about what caused the Revolution, and to talk about how the charges of freedom and liberty were all about recognizing the rights of the people instead of recognizing only the commands of Kings and tyrants.

In July of 1776, representatives of the several colonies met in Philadelphia. Lead by Virginian slaveowner and politician Thomas Jefferson, the Congress drafted the Declaration of Independence, separating the colonies from Great Britain and King George III. The burden of an unruly tyrant’s demands on the people of the colonies to fund the wars of England elsewhere had grown too much, the will of the people was to separate themselves from this brutal treatment.

Violent incidents in the Northeastern states had been occurring for more than a year, with colonists at Lexington and Concord coming under fire from the British Army. Battles at Ticonderoga,

Among their complaints of inequitable treatment, in specific, they cited:

• He [King George III] 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 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 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 harass 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 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 benefit of Trial by Jury
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

As we take stock of 249 years of history, especially the last few months, the colonists’ rebuke of King George III’s cruelty feels a lot more like the present than any of us would care for. The unitary executive that the Trump Administration has sought to pursue has twisted our nation’s leadership to look more like the tyrants your great great great grandfather Andreas Hauff fought while in that Continental Army, a brand new immigrant to this continent.

These times are not easy ones, and indeed they test the very liberty and freedom that were signed into being with the Declaration of Independence. But as we mark that right choice — a choice sworn to with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor — we have to recognize that we are called on through the generations to make similar choices.

There may come a time in the future where we have to revisit the circumstances that Jefferson called “the consent of the governed,” as when forms of government become destructive to the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish that government. The risks that our forebears took, and the sacrifices that they made to take those risks, are a permanent reminder that the price of free society can be high.

But the alternative, to see people placed in subjugation, to see others jailed abroad without due process, to see a corruption of our laws, and of the executive authorities, and do nothing?

That isn’t it, either.

For now, we resist these instinctual tyrannies through protest, through electoral politics, and through reminding each other of those inalienable rights in the Declaration. We remind each other that the need for control across our great nation is a brittle thing that tyrants cannot long enforce because it requires constant effort that their lazy aims cannot hold. We hold forth our values of hospitality, of care for others, of care for country from attack from within by tyrannical forces.

Every act of care is, in a sense, an act of Independence from their cruelty.

Every act of hospitality, every hug, every kind word to a friend, every chance to lift someone up that you take, those are all actions that help rebuild the future.

Happy Independence Day.