This, our day of Independence...

The mire of occupation, the treatment as a second class of citizen, the onset of egregious new taxation, and no power to seek honest counsel before the King, the people of the American Colonies were pushed into war. Long had our people endured hardship, but this yoke was too much for the ox to bear. And so, a council of brave men put pen to paper, and before the ink had dried lay down their pens in favor of their muskets. If men on this earth were ever to truly know freedom, this would be the moment that would break down barriers for generations to come.

And so a war was fought. Great men battled the mightiest army and navy the world had ever seen... and won. What was won was not won lightly. With the blood and bone of many a brave soul, the mortar of this country's foundation was mixed. With the sweat and tears of those still living, the foundation was laid - a foundation rooted on a simple concept, that men are naturally free and that free men instinctively resist the shackles of tyranny.

On this, our day of Independence, some 234 years after our freedom was declared and the fate of an entire people put to the test, we are once again faced with tyranny. Free men and women recognize tyranny at its basic existence, but even today in this once free country there is a tyranny so much more oppressive than that beat back by our forefathers. In this country, in our home, grown from our seed, there is an evil that has overtaken the very institutions established after our great war... the institutions so fragile that a mere whisper once could have destroyed them. Now, to the trumpet of the lion's roar, corruption screams through the highest level of government, and tyranny once again befalls our great people.

On this, our day of Independence, remember these words:

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.

Remember that Government is granted power by the consent of the citizen, though the government of today would have you believe that you are granted certain freedoms at the pleasure of the government.

Remember that Natural Law dictates that it is man's will to be free, and we should be prepared to spill blood and have our blood spilled in order to secure liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

And remember, on all days as you do today, that freedom, absolute freedom, is the responsibility of every man, woman, and child to maintain. Surrender some freedom and you have put all freedom in jeopardy.