Our Declaration of Independence was written in response to the many impositions of an abusive English king. The resistance did not originate at that time but began 560 years before.
The Magna Carta was written in 2015, in times of absolute monarchs and the divine right of kings. Presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury and backed by a group of powerful barons and others, they insisted that even a monarch was ruled by laws. It began a very slow but developing discussion of human rights and was affirmed by following monarchs.
Among the important things our Declarations says is “Governments are instituted among men (aka humans) deriving their just Powers from the consent of the Governed …”
Most young people have heard “taxation without representation is tyranny” and the colonists had no representative in Parliament.
The Boston Tea Party was a single act of protest after the king demanded that colonists not grow their own tea, but purchase the tea of the king’s corporation.
Our system of government was established to prevent a dictator from taking power through three autonomous, but interacting, parts of government – the legislative branch (with two chambers, a House and Senate), the executive branch, which included informed advisers, and the judicial branch, the Supreme Court. It was a system of checks and balances.
Today, someone I call DT would like to destroy our system of government.
Daisy Swadesh
Farmington
