In 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was written. Thomas Jefferson enumerated why the original thirteen colonies found it necessary to seek independence from the British Crown. In it, he listed the following "injuries and usurpations":
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.
Clearly, these were excellent reasons to seek freedom and independence. However, in 2022, how are we doing with our independence in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and self-rule? Some might say that we traded in one kind of authoritarianism for another where the executive, judiciary and the legislative bodies in states have outsized power over the day-to-day existence of women, people of color, and those lacking financial means to influence. It would seem that the "checks and balances" are failing many and therefore our self-governance is being usurped. Thankfully, our form of government does have an essential safeguard, the power of the electorate to vote for change and this has likely kept us from entering into a second civil war. However, when the halls of Congress are largely occupied by self-serving interests and wedge issue wars are being promulgated by monied interests to prop up economic interests who largely do not represent the vast majority of us, it is right to ask how will we continue to make this experiment in representative democracy work? For too long the interests that guide our state are largely economic and the welfare of the residents has taken a back seat to those interests that fuel the economic engine. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has become outsized and power has been consolidated along the way.
With each gerrymandering of a district or removal of authority of a city or county, local law has been reduced and therefore the freedom of those impacted by the law. In a way, we are being micro-managed by power-grabbing entities that have formed an unholy alliance--such as church and state, industry and state, parties and supporters. Freedom shouldn't be this hard, but it has been made so by professionalizing politics and underlying bureaucracies, pitting neighbor against neighbor by militarizing the public sphere, and creating an environment of chaos by undervaluing and encouraging propaganda over education. And on top of all this, we have allowed a hellscape to be carved out of our environment such that massive effort will need to be undertaken to support the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of people living not only in this country, but around the world.
Paraphrasing Meridith Willson, we've got trouble, right here in the US of A. Without a coming to grips with how we got here and working together to change the dynamics in place, I fear the state of the union looks quite bleak. So here is an exercise I would like us all to consider, if you were responsible for writing the 2022 version of a declaration of independence, what might you say?
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