Days gone by:

Monday – August 15, 2011

Days gone by:

It used to be that a President’s words were met with certain action. It used to be that a President’s words were words that were met with a plan. It used to be that the president would lead a Congress and a Senate. It used to be that the President, the Congress and the Senate would work hand in hand to improve the condition of the country and to insure and inspire each and every one of its citizens that the country would grow and that the country would prosper. These are the guarantees that our posterity are depending on.

Those were the days that have now gone by. As we witnessed the straw poll in Iowa this weekend and we analyze the results, we cannot begin to think that the results are finalized and that the front runners will be the front runners in the next go around. I am not going to predict who I think will win. I am not going to predict what the front runner is going to say or is going to do next. But what I will do is begin to lay out a plan of where I believe the country should go and how we can get it there.

What I will begin to do today is to remind you of what I wrote on July 8, 2011. This will start to frame the platform that is necessary for any candidate to consider and the one that we should be considering when we vote for a new President, Senator, or even a Congressman. We should also take these thoughts and bring them down to a local level. When we vote for a Governor or a new Mayor or even a City Council member, we must start to analyze their positions, as they compare to what our forefathers conveyed in our founding documents.

Someone who I consider to be a close friend and who I also consider to be a great friend asked me this question last night, “what would I do”, if I had a chance to make a difference. I might add one more thing; Barbara is also a smart friend. The question was asked because of a discussion that I will put into context over the next few weeks. Today’s FORUM is a reprint of what I wrote on July 8, 2011. I am reprinting this article in hope that it will start to define an answer to the basic question of “what would I do.” I hope that this article will begin to answer the basic question that was asked of me by a friend!
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July 8, 2011

The first view!

On today’s date, in 1776, John Nixon gave the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.

Upon finalizing the text of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 Congress issued the Declaration in several forms. It was initially published as a printed broadside that was widely distributed and read to the public. The most famous version of the Declaration, a signed copy that is usually regarded as the Declaration of Independence, is on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Although the wording of the Declaration was approved on July 4, the date of its signing has been disputed. Most historians have concluded that it was signed nearly a month after its adoption, on August 2, 1776, and not on July 4, as is commonly believed.
The sources and interpretation of the Declaration has been the subject of much scholarly inquiry. The Declaration justified the independence of the United States by listing colonial grievances against King George III, and by asserting certain natural and legal rights, including a right of revolution. Having served its original purpose in announcing independence, the text of the Declaration was initially ignored after the American Revolution. However, its stature grew over the years, particularly the second sentence, which brings human rights into the political structure of the colonies.

“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.”

This sentence has been called "one of the best-known sentences in the English language" and "the most potent and consequential words in American history". The passage has often been used to promote the rights of marginalized people, and came to represent a moral standard for which the United States should strive. This view was notably promoted by Abraham Lincoln, who considered the Declaration to be the foundation of his political philosophy, and argued that the Declaration is a statement of principles through which the United States Constitution should be interpreted.

It is fitting that in July we talk about independence and it is essential that we understand the reasons why our independence was sought.

This week, I have tried to bring into focus some of the facts and a few of the political considerations that our forefathers were aware of and used to their benefit in developing the concept of independence from Great Britain. Jefferson who has been credited for the draft and the final wording was in fact in love with the idea of a separate nation under its own rule. He along with many of the original signers made it abundantly clear that with independence would come the question of self rule and that the governed have the final say over their government.
Jefferson wrote: “Believe me, dear Sir: there is not in the British Empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose; and in this, I think I speak the sentiments of America.”

—Thomas Jefferson, November 29, 1775

By the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July 1776, the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain had been at war for more than a year. Relations between the colonies and the mother country had been deteriorating since the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763. The war had plunged the British government deep into debt, and so Parliament enacted a series of measures to increase tax revenue from the colonies. Parliament believed that these acts, such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 were a legitimate means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs to keep the colonies in the British Empire.
Many colonists, however, had developed a different conception of the empire. Because the colonies were not directly represented in Parliament, colonists argued that Parliament had no right to levy taxes upon them. This tax dispute was part of a larger divergence between British and American interpretations of the British Constitution and the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies. The orthodox British view, dating from the “Glorious Revolution of 1688”, was that Parliament was the supreme authority throughout the empire and so, by definition, anything Parliament did was constitutional.

In the colonies, however, the idea had developed that the British Constitution recognized certain fundamental rights that no government—not even Parliament—could violate. After the Townshend Acts, some essayists even began to question whether Parliament had any legitimate jurisdiction in the colonies at all. Anticipating the arrangement of the British Commonwealth by 1774 American writers such as Samuel Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson were arguing that Parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and that the colonies, which had their own legislatures, were connected to the rest of the empire only through their allegiance to the Crown.

Now that you have the first view of how our Declaration of Independence came to be, we must start to ask the same questions that Jefferson, Adams and Wilson were asking. The questions today are the same as they were then. It is over jurisdiction; the rights of separate state legislatures, our fundamental founding principles and “among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The answers to the essential questions we have today should be viewed through the prism of history and what the historical facts tell us. The first view of our independence was through “certain unalienable” rights and not through what politicians believe our rights should be.
If I were fortunate enough to be representing the people today, I would be looking to find the answers through the prism of what Jefferson and Adams view was. I would be testing legislation through the Constitutional litmus rather than the entitlement litmus that runs Washington today. I would be looking at tax and spending issues through the prism of wealth generation and not through the prism of shared responsibility and spreading of the wealth. I would be looking to create equal opportunity and not making an attempt to equalize the results of equal opportunity.
If I were fortunate enough to represent the people, I would not make a career out of it, but rather to create the view of what was seen through the creation of these words: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

In order to grow a more perfect union, our posterity must be given the chance to experience the promotion of general welfare, not through entitlements but through free enterprise, free markets and the freedom that our way of life brings if unaltered and if kept alone. Those who believe in liberty and who were taught to respect the law and who through moral standards create the wealth are the ones that will create an environment for our posterity to do the same. This is what I believe was the first view that our forefathers saw.

I end each week with a quote: “If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.”

-George Washington

The first view is the correct view, because it is unhampered and it is so inspiring. But then again, this is just my opinion.

Gregory C. Dildilian
Founder and Executive Director
Pinecone Conservatives

A footnote: The prism in which I speak of can be viewed for the first time if you view the original context of what independence, liberty and freedom was designed to give. Government could never provide it because the view of the forefathers put the responsibility into the hands of the governed. We must view the principals of what Jefferson put into words and what Lincoln saw.
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My dear friend Barbara, I hope that I have begun to answer your question of what I would do if I were fortunate enough to represent the people. And to the rest of the readers, I hope that I am fortifying what you already know about me.

Through this month of August I will state in clear terms what I would do in many areas of what the daily debate brings to us all.

This is an important month, there is a fair amount of history and there will be a fair amount of opinion, this I will guarantee!

Gregory C. Dildilian
Founder and Executive Director
Pinecone Conservatives

A footnote: A prediction is always based on conjecture. Fact, however, is based on history and future fact is a result of how we view the past history of “days gone by.”