An old writing on the importance of a free citizenry and Second Amendment rights:
Never Forget The Principles That Undergird The American Revolution
Never Forget The Principles That Undergird The American Revolution - tribunedigital-orlandosentinel
July 3, 1994 | By Charley Reese of The Sentinel Staff
May I suggest that Americans form Committees for the Defense of the Revolution? Our revolution, that is.
Most Americans have forgotten our revolutionary heritage. They tend to think of it, if at all, as nothing but a war to break loose from the British empire. It was a lot more than that.
The basic principles of the American Revolution were stated eloquently in the Declaration of Independence. The first is that human beings are all born free and endowed by God with rights that precede the establishment of government. That is the defining belief of an American.
It's important to understand that. Many people today think of rights as something granted by government, but that's wrong. Whatever government grants, by implication, it may withdraw or refuse to grant. Such a thing is a privilege, not a right. A right is permanent and may not legitimately be taken away or abridged by government.
The second great principle of the American Revolution was that the sole purpose for which men created governments (note, God creates men and rights; men create governments) was to protect and preserve their rights.
From this flows the logical premise that the primary purpose of government is not to provide economic benefits or privileges but to protect the liberty of the people. From this flows the logical premise that the relationship between government and people is that of servant and master - not the reverse, as many politicians and bureaucrats assume it is today.
The third great principle is that when a government, rather than protecting and preserving rights, becomes abusive of those rights, then the people have the right and the duty to overthrow it and to replace it with another.
This is not interpretation on my part. The Declaration is as explicit and clear as sunshine on these three points. Naturally, politicians and bureaucrats and those people addicted to the slave mentality do not feel comfortable reminding people that they have the right and the duty to overthrow a government that abuses them.
Not only does the Declaration state this explicitly as a major principle, but the signers of the Declaration were in the process of doing exactly that - overthrowing a government that they deemed had become abusive of their God-given rights.
Another reason modern politicians dislike reminding people about the Declaration and our Revolution is because, when you understand the revolutionary principles, the Constitution becomes clear.
The meaning of the Second Amendment, for example, which states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged, is perfectly clear when read in conjunction with the Declaration of Independence. If people are sovereign, if people have a right to overthrow an abusive government, then no government must ever be allowed to disarm the people.
To read the Second Amendment as that gaggle of lying elitists in the gun-control mob want you to - that it merely guarantees a government army for the states - is ludicrous and contradictory. It is crystal clear - and there is a growing body of scholarly work that supports this view - that the Second Amendment not only guarantees individual rights to keep and bear arms, it means by arms military-style weapons.
These revolutionaries were not concerned that a government might interfere with duck hunters. They were concerned that people would always be armed so that, if necessary, they could revolt against the government, overthrow it and replace it with a better one. That's what they were doing when they wrote the Declaration, and that's what they had just done when they adopted the Constitution.
Read your Declaration of Independence and your Constitution together and you will see they make a perfect fit. Let us not forget our Revolutionary heritage. The alternative is some form of slavery.
And this buttresses my argument in the Baltimore thread that this is the solution to police suppression of the people:
We lost Charley Reese a couple of years ago - can't say I always agreed with him but he was a good hearted man, very patriotic, and highly principled. A true American hero in many ways.
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