A Light in the Mirror

Greetings everyone,

I am again sending out my annual Independence Day email to everyone that I know and hold dear. It is my way of celebrating the birth of this nation in which we live in. This year, our 232^nd year of existence from the time our Founding Fathers and their families committed High Treason against the British Crown, is one of a special occasion.

Two-hundred-thirty-two years ago 56 men signed what could essentially be their own death certificates had their actions fizzled and failed. Fifty-six men gambled in a game few others dare to play: succeed and secure liberty for their families and friends; or fail, and swing from the gallows prior to being drawn and quartered. The idea of hanging by a rope is more than enough to keep most from seeking change in the world they live in. Yet, those men felt so passionate about their cause that they would risk death of them and those around them to seek a better life.

Here we are, 232 years later… and we’ve forgotten. Today, we idly sit while our representatives in Congress, the abomination that is our Executive Branch, and hundreds of other key individuals on all levels of government unravel the very fabric of what 56 men and their followers placed their lives on the line for two centuries ago. We sit while our ability to travel is reduced to being identified, classified, scanned, searched, probed, and violated all in the name of ‘national safety’. We sit while Congress considers granting the Telecommunication Giants such as Verizon and Comcast immunity for violating our constitutional rights by allowing the Government to spy on your phone calls and internet traffic without proper warrants. We sit while a war is raged in our name over lies and deceit. We sit while our economy slides further and further towards the abyss. We sit while our leaders destroy our nation.

Oh, we find plenty to bicker about. We bicker about non-issues like whom can marry whom. We bicker about whether religion and science belong in the same classroom. We fight over obscenity on our television. We fight over dumb things while our nation grows more uneducated, poorer, more violent, more polluted, and less healthy. We try to blame it all on corrupt politicians, inflation, urban influence, corporations, fast food, and illegal immigrants. The fact is, we’re all to blame. Every time we blindly vote for candidates that we hear on TV, every City and County Council meeting we miss, every time we fill out a ballot we know nothing about, every time we tune to ‘American Idol’ or some other crap show instead of PBS, C-SPAN, etc., or every time get our news from snark-filled comedians and websites, we do it to ourselves.

This Independence Day, I challenge everyone of you. I challenge everyone to buy every member of their household a pocket-copy of the U.S. Constitution ($5 at any bookstore, or online at Barnes and Noble) and have them read it, from the opening to the end. All articles and all amendments. I challenge everyone to carry it with them everywhere they go, and read a portion from time to time. I challenge everyone to make giving everyone they know a copy at one point or another a priority. I challenge everyone to get involved, to take the time to go to City or County Council, or to any other meetings in which the public are invited, such as for the Fire District or School District. I challenge everyone to research the issues, the candidates, the whole ballot. I challenge everyone to take a stand against the tyranny that has befallen our nation and proclaim once again:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

My friends, it is time we re-evaluate our situation. It is time we look again to ourselves and determine “Is this the Government we wanted representing us”, and if that answer is NO, then we must again make the hard decision: Do we believe in the wording of the Constitution and are willing to wager all that there is to wager, or do we cower in the corner hoping that nothing bad ever happens to us.

Two-hundred-thirty-two years have passed since the families of this nation placed their lives on the line in pursuit of a greater cause, and in that time we have gone full circle and come back to where we started.

We can change the nation, but first, we have to change ourselves. We have to start by giving a damn. Only then, will anything else be possible.

Below is the link to a poem I wrote last Independence Day which I hope you enjoy.

Good night, and good luck.

- B. L. McGarr