Paul M Howey

When “in the course of human events” will you get angry, America?

Are we showing our age? Is 232 too old to get upset over what’s happening to our country? That’s one possible explanation, because we would all like to believe we care more than we’re showing.

For the first time in our nation’s history, we launched an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, while embracing the leaders of the country whose people did hijack the planes on September 11. We’d talk more about that, but it makes our brains hurt to sort historic fact from the administration’s fiction.

With blind disregard for both international law and common morality, we now torture our fellow human beings. We’d get worked up over that, too, were we not so captivated by the videotapes of the latest hot celeb rushing to rehab.

Our Constitutional rights have been shredded and the administration spies on us. All pesky problems, we concede, but what can we do? There are terrorists lurking everywhere, we’re told, and our government is only trying to protect us. We should be thankful not skeptical.

WWTJD? As the principal architect of the Declaration of Independence, we know what Thomas Jefferson did in 1776 and we can, with some certainty, predict what he would do were he alive today.

He wrote about certain truths and rights being self-evident and unalienable and then, in the very next paragraph, he said that whenever “any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” He cautioned, however, that long-established governments “should not be changed for light and transient causes...”

Jefferson’s words are prescient in their message. He and his patriotic colleagues not only set forth eloquently their position against the actions of King George III, they carefully worded their concerns and prescriptions in timeless language that is as relevant today as it was then.

He acknowledged that it is human nature to abide tolerable abuses rather than to take the steps necessary to abolish them. In other words, it’s sometimes easier to go along rather than make waves. Look at us today. Jefferson knew whereof he spoke.

The members of the Continental Congress were outraged at the conditions imposed upon them by England. They could no longer accept what was happening and so, at enormous risk to themselves and their families, they put their names to a document that shaped a nation.

For us to truly understand their sacrifices and fully grasp their meaning, we must be willing to make some sacrifices of our own. As did they, we too should become outraged. We, too, must be willing to cast off the suffocating cloak of complacency. We must assert, as Jefferson wrote, “the right of the people to alter” our government.

We need to begin holding fully accountable our elected officials and everyone who aspires to leadership. We must insist they restore to full power all the rights given to us by the founders of our nation.

Independence Day. Can’t think of a better time to start.