Keeping It: The Higher Law of the American Revolution

The 250th anniversary of the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia is being celebrated today by Americans, and people all across the world. Celebrating the signing is one thing, however {co-signing} it, is another. How do we bring America’s actions into consistency with the words of that document?

Of those who commemorated the 250th anniversary was Pope Leo XIII, an American at birth, but now the representative of over 1.4 billion Catholics across the world. Speaking to an assembly at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia yesterday, as a recipient of their 38th annual Liberty Medal award, the Pope urged his fellow Americans to make a “solemn commitment to these ideals that have made America a country that values peace and prosperity, a country characterized by generosity and nobility of heart.” Religious leaders repenting many faiths—Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam—spoke before the Pope, as did political leaders, such as Pennsylvania’s Governor and Philadelphia’s Mayor, among others.

But a world away, millions are now gathered in the streets of Iran, and in the city of Teheran at the funeral of the assassinated supreme leader Ayatollah Kamenei, risking their lives to attend a public ceremony, despite threats and hostility to their doing so. These threats were voiced and “not-so-subtly implied” by Israel, and by “influential persons” in the United States. 13 nations were scared away from attending in person, though many others were not, and Iran saw representatives from more countries than is has seen in decades. Iran has in fact won a moral, as well as military victory over Israel and the United States, whatever either of those two powers would like to pretend.

Is today’s assembly in Iran in one sense an expression of the “higher law” invoked by those colonists that were traitors to the British Crown, upon which they based their decision that “to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation”? To not ask such uncomfortable questions, is to not take the statements contained in the July 4 document seriously.

Look at what is happening in our Congress, right under the noses of the American people. Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a consistent opponent of the post-9/11 endless wars of aggression launched by George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and others, is one of the few former legislators that has called attention to a most treasonous aspect of the new National Defense Authorization Act. The American people are note being told about it. Section 219 (formerly Section 224) of the NDAA would merge U.S. military technology and intelligence with that of a foreign country, Israel, at the most advanced levels. Kucinich says:”When the House returns (after the July 4 recess,) the Rules Committee must meet again and draft a new rule. Based on what just happened in committee, there is every reason to believe the new rule will once again prevent any amendment from being offered to remove the military merger.

Yesterday, in another warning, former Congressman Kucinich states, “Let us be reminded by Thomas Jefferson’s July 4, 1776 characterization of George III, King of Great Britain: ‘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….’”

Kucinich concluded, “Our forefathers did not fight for freedom and for independence at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Trenton, Saratoga, and Yorktown, nor sacrifice American blood and treasure in battles in World War I and World War II to arrive at July 4, 2026, having willingly forfeited our sovereignty to a foreign nation, losing control of our future and putting in doubt “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.” Don’t you think it’s better to continue the American Revolution, than to pretend to celebrate it? At the end of the party we may otherwise wake up after the hangover only to discover that we have lost the nation in our sleep. Let’s elect to continue the American Revolution!