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Rebels, they were not!
By Steve Farrell
Hitler said: "Tell a lie, tell it often enough and the people will believe it."
Maybe you've heard this one: The Founding Father's were "rebels" against the existing order - just like Progressives, Marxists, Third Wayers, and Globalists are today.
Lies don't come any bigger.
So with Independence Day upon us; let's set the record straight: The Founder's took up arms to uphold the existing order, namely: natural law, inalienable rights, and self government - because their mother country refused to - and because without representation, they were denied redress.
That makes the British, not the Founders, rebels - and listen here, a few top Brits admitted it.
Adam Smith, of "Wealth of Nations" fame, pronounced the prohibitory laws of England toward the colonies, "a manifest violation of the most sacred rights," "impertinent badges of slavery imposed upon them without any sufficient reason by the groundless jealousy of . . .[England's] merchants and manufacturers . . ."
The war with the colonists, wrote Edmund Burke, is "fruitless, hopeless, and unnatural."
"The colonies," said Dunning, "are not in a state of rebellion, but resisting the attempt to establish despotism in America, as a prelude to the same system in the mother country. Opposition to arbitrary measures is warranted by the constitution, and established by precedent."
"A fit and proper resistance," said Wilkes, "is a revolution, not a rebellion. Who can tell whether, in consequence of this day's violent and mad address, the scabbard may not be thrown away by the Americans as well as by us; and, should success attend them, whether, in a few years, the Americans may not celebrate the glorious era of the revolution of 1775 as we do that of 1688? Success crowned the generous effort of our forefathers for freedom; else they had died on the scaffold as traitors and rebels, and the period of our history which does us the most honor would have been deemed a rebellion against lawful authority, not the expulsion of a tyrant."
"We are the aggressors," said Chatham, "instead of exacting unconditional submission from the colonies, we ought to grant them unconditional redress."
"I am not surprised," he noted, a few months later, "that men who hate liberty should detest those that prize it; or that those who want virtue themselves should persecute those who possess it. The whole of your political conduct has been one continued series of weakness and temerity, despotism and the most notorious servility, incapacity and corruption . . .
Later, the senior statesmen Chatham, rising from his sick bed, put out his final inspired warning:
"The spirit which now resists your taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England; the same which, by the bill of rights, vindicated the English constitution; the same which established the essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent. This glorious spirit . . . animates three millions in America . . .
"Let this distinction then remain forever ascertained: taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours. They say you have no right to tax them without their consent; they say truly. I recognize to the Americans their supreme, unalienable right in their property, a right which they are justified in the defense of to the last extremity. To maintain this principle is the great common cause . . . 'Tis liberty to liberty engaged;' the alliance of God and nature, immutable and eternal . . .
"When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us from America, when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own.
"For myself, I must avow that in all my reading -- and I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master-states of the world -- for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no body of men can stand in preference to the general congress at Philadelphia. The histories of Greece and Rome give us nothing equal to it, and all attempts to impose servitude upon such a mighty continental nation must be vain.
"We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when we must. These violent acts must be repealed; you will repeal them; I stake my reputation on it, that you will in the end repeal them. Avoid, then, this humiliating necessity. . .
". . .throw down the weapons in your hand. . .
"Every motive of justice and policy, of dignity and of prudence,urges you to allay the ferment in America . . .
"If the ministers persevere in thus misadvising and misleading the king, I will not say that the king is betrayed, but I will pronounce that the kingdom is undone; I will not say that they can alienate the affections of his subjects from his crown, but I will affirm that, the American jewel out of it, they will make the crown not worth his wearing."
Chatham, Smith, Burke, Dunning, and Wilkes - statesmen from the enemy camp - were right. The War for Independence was a just war, fought on the American side by those who upheld and defended established law, eternal principles, and inalienable rights, as no men in the world's history, before them had. And so, let this then be said and remembered forever: these, our Founders, were not rebels; but principled patriots and prophets, who bravely battled for Liberty and Law!
Contact Steve at Cyours76@yahoo.com.
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