from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News

Posted: 01 Jul 2009 07:37 PM PDT

With the 4th of July coming up, it is easy to get distracted by
all the flag waving, the tricolor banners and the emphasis on national
independence, to forget that the American Revolution was caused by the
political abuse of power, rather than by a pure striving toward national
independence. Rather than an independence movement on the grounds of
national identity, the American Revolution saw British citizens revolting
against incursions on their rights and freedoms by a distant and powerful
government.

The 4th of July commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of
Independence, not a military victory that marked the end of British rule
such as the Battle of Yorktown or the anniversary of the beginning of
American government with the United States Constitution or Washington's
inauguration-- all of which would seem to be legitimate dates as well.
Instead it commemorates a document which created no specific governmental
authority, but instead lays out as its key doctrine, freedom.

The
Declaration of Independence argues that rights are natural, and do not
require a divinely appointed intercessor between man and G-d, in the form
of a monarch. It states that the people of the United States do not derive
their laws from being the subjects of a king, but from natural rights
inherent in every human being, and that above all else they have the right
to live, to be free and to pursue the course of their lives as they see
fit.

This was a bold statement to make in a time when government
received its authority from tradition and held its people as subjects,
when church and state were intertwined so that the state held religious
and even divine authority. The Declaration of Independence rejected the
sanctity of government, instead putting forward the idea that government
is nothing more than the consensual agreement of people as a tool for
maintaining their affairs.

In a few short words what the 4th of
July marks is a document that stated that henceforth in America, the
people would not be creature of their government, but the government would
be a creature of the people. The Declaration of Independence was not
simply a declaration of national independence or the independence of the
thirteen states-- it was a declaration of individual independence. It
stated that not only did each American have rights and freedoms
independent of any government, but that the government was his to make or
unmake.

And yet the average American of 2009 is far more a creature
of the government, than a colonial of 1769 ever was.

Thanks to the
tattered remains of the Constitution the American of 2009 has managed to
maintain some key political freedoms that his counterpart in 1769 did not
have, but for all that his life is a tightly regimented and heavily taxed
affair, overseen by a distant central government and its "multitude of New Offices" and their
"swarms of Officers to harrass our people
and eat out their substance" that the Declaration had complained
about. Except today we call them Czars.

All this happened because
Americans spent far too much time celebrating the forms of government,
while forgetting the substance of their rights. Generations view the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as sacred documents,
without actually understanding the fundamental principles that they
embody. Meanwhile an activist judiciary has worked hard to create new
"rights" out of whole cloth in the Constitution to be administered by the
government, only to take away the plain rights that actually do exist in
the Constitution. Government has become centralized and
absolute.

We can still vote in legislators and executives, within
the narrow parameters of a two party system in which both parties are
absolutely committed to the expansion of government power. We cannot
however vote away the bureaucracy, the "multitude of new Offices" and
"swarms of Officers", who rule our lives directly, and whose numbers
constantly keep growing without number.

The American political
system has become a self-perpetuating interest group run by lawyers for
the benefit of their supporters. A group that considers constitutional
literalism to be outmoded and views government as a nanny caring for
people who cannot properly care for themselves.

The British
monarchy saw colonials as childlike subjects. The American government
today sees them as self-destructive infants, too stupid to know what is
good for them. The fundamental doctrine of tyranny in American today is no
longer the divine authority of the king, but the temporal authority of the
social worker. Both are premised on the incompetence and inequality of the
ruled in relation to the rulers.

It is a given that people who cannot take care of themselves
without help are inferior to those who care for them. And whatever pretty
words it may be dressed up in, those who are cared for have less freedom
and independence than their self-appointed caretakers.

And so the
nanny government constantly searches for new ways to project its subjects
from themselves, while finding ways to turn a tidy profit on the
arrangement. Are the pesky subjects smoking? Are they eating fatty foods?
Are they driving fast cars, building houses not up to code and using
plastic bags? Are they gambling, drinking and using insensitive language?
Don't they know it's not good for them. "There oughta be a law" and
sooner or later there is.

American government began as a tool with
limited power, a hacksaw or an ax, and has since become a giant power jack
of all trades with 300 different drills, saws and instruments built in,
but which is too heavy to actually move anywhere or do anything with. But
our fascination with the tool we had drove us to do what humans always do
with tools, improve them to be able to do more. And government began doing
more. Year by year, decade by decade and century by century, it grew
larger and more powerful. And there came a day when no one knew how to
shut it off anymore.

What does freedom mean anyway? Freedom as
embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the 4th of July means
freedom from government. The freedom to choose and shape laws and to treat
government as a tool, rather than a master.

For now we still have
ballots and voting booths. We can elect and unelect politicians. And when
we elect the "wrong ones", the media and cultural establishment will smear
them and tear them apart until we see reason and elect the men and women
that they support. For now we still have that. But there were ballots and
voting booths and in the USSR. There are ballots and voting booths in
Iran. The key question is not simply who counts the votes, but do the
votes actually count?

Democracy alone means that those who vote have a degree of
control over the election of candidates. How much control they have
depends on factors such as how open the nomination process is, how much
influence raw money has on elections and help determine how much power
vested interests exercise over the system, rather than the actual
constituents.

In American politics, democracy has become a game in
which winning the popular vote is the final goal. Those are the rules of
the game that the various corporations, lobbies and special interest
groups continue to play by in order to get what they want. For now. It is
not inconceivable that they might at one date decided that they would be
better served by modifying the rules of the game.

When the Republican governor of California and the
Democratic assembly failed to win the public's constant for new taxes on
the ballot, the immediate response from many pundits was to argue that the
people of California had failed to make the right decision, and with
adduced proof from their previous votes against illegal immigrants and gay
marriage, should no longer be able to vote on ballot measures.

In East Germany, Erich Honecker once stated that the government had lost
confidence in the people, and that they would have to regain the
government's trust. There may come a time when the government loses
confidence in the American people. As the King of England once lost
confidence in his subjects.

Against that day, we hold these truths
to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government.

That is what freedom
means. Government is either a slave of the citizenry or its master. In a
free nation, government is a slave. In a slave nation, it is a
master.