Why We Fought and Why We Must Fight Again

“There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away.  There is a time to fight, and that time has now come.”  ~Reverend John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg (1746-1807), sermon in Woodstock, Virginia, January 1776

 By Alden L. Benton

In a 2005 article on WallBuilders.com titled God: Missing in Action from American History, David Barton outlines how Progressives have revised American history by changing the focus from people to economics.

This change of focus ignores the social, moral, and religious foundation laid down by the founding generation.  With this change of focus, the Progressives have marginalized the role of people and their faith in the founding and development of the United States.

In addition, this change of focus to economics masks the truth about the grievances, which led to our separation from England and has created an uninformed, if not illiterate population where the founding documents and principles are concerned.

According to Barton, “Today, however, history is presented in such an edited, revised, and politically-correct manner that God’s hand is rarely visible – and even the historic role of famous Godly leaders in education, business, politics, and the military is now virtually unacknowledged.”

He continues, saying that, this shift of focus to the economics of history have relegates all but one of the 27 grievances stated in the Declaration of Independence to irrelevance.  According to Progressives, it was all about taxation without representation.

As usual, the Progressives are dead wrong.

The Declaration of Independence is clear in listing just what the problems were that led to rebellion.  It is clear what the founders felt was tyranny.

The Spanish philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.”  He was correct, for through the ignorance foisted on us by Progressives, we not only fail to understand our roots, our heritage, but our future course.

The Declaration of Independence lists 27 issues the King of England would not resolve.  We rebelled.  Today, many of these grievances can be leveled at our own government.  I have listed those 27 grievances below, pulled directly from the Declaration, in their original language.  The bullet numbers were added for clarity.

Read these grievances carefully.  Apply their words to the actions of our government today and decide whether it is time to fight.

1. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
2. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
3. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
4. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
5. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
6. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
7. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
8. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
9. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
10. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
11. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
12. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
13. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
14. For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
15. For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
16. For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
17. For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
18. For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
19. For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
20. For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
21. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
22. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
23. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
24. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
25. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
26. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
27. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

 “No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved.  On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”  ~Samuel Adams

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©2013 Alden L. Benton/Independence Creek Enterprises
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It All Began Today

By Alden L. Benton

April 19, 1775, is a date all Americans should honor and remember.  It is a day second in importance only to July 4.  It is the day the American Revolution began.

Tension between the American colonists and the British had been rising for years.  The British occupied Boston, Massachusetts.

General Thomas Gage, the military governor of Massachusetts received orders to disarm the colonial militias and arrest key colonial leaders.  The day before the battle, Gage scouted the area around Concord, Massachusetts, suspecting the militia’s cache of supplies was hidden there.

However, Gage’s scouting party alerted the Patriots of their intentions.  Patriot leaders such as Samuel Adams and John Hancock left the area for the safety of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  That night, Patriot leader Dr. Joseph Warren sent William Dawes and Paul Revere to alert the militia that the British were headed to Lexington and Concord.  Most of the supplies at Concord were moved elsewhere.  In the morning, the British sent 700 men to Lexington.

The Patriot militia mustered on the Lexington town green with orders not to fire unless fired upon.  At sunrise, the British arrived.  Their commander ordered the militia to disperse and lay down their arms.  The militia began to disperse, but kept their weapons.

A shot rang out.  The battle began.  The British charged forward and drove the militia from the green.  Musket smoke filled the green.  When the some cleared, eight militiamen were dead and ten wounded.  One British soldier was injured.

The British moved on toward their original objective: Concord.

The militia in Concord took up a defensive position on a hill across the North Bridge while the British force searched the town for the colonials’ munitions cache.  While the British searched for munitions, militia from surrounding towns was reinforcing the Concord militia.

The British found little munitions, but disable three cannons.

The colonial militia, now 400 strong, advanced towards the bridge and engaged the British.  The militiamen fired across the river, forcing the British back into the town.  The British commander did not engage the militia and readied his men for the march back to Boston.

As the British marched back towards Boston, the militia attacked.  The first attack was at Meriam’s Corner, about a mile from Concord.  This was followed by another attack at Brooks Hill, and by a third at the “Bloody Angle.”

At the “Bloody Angle,” more than 200 militiamen fired on the British from behind trees and fences on both sides of the road, catching the British in crossfire.  As the British neared Lexington, the Lexington militia ambushed them.  When they finally reached Lexington, the battered British troops were reinforced, and continued their march to Boston.

The Massachusetts militia suffered 50 killed, 39 wounded, and five missing that day.  The British forces lost 73 dead, 173 wounded, and 26 missing.

This is our heritage.  This is the American spirit.  This is the history of this great land and its people.

This is the essence of America that Obama and the Left sneer at, and spit upon. This is the heritage Obama and the Left want to “fundamentally transform.” 

This is the history they continue to revise in order to fit it to their warped idea of the truth. This is not the history they teach our children.

The men at Lexington and Concord, outnumbered and outgunned, took on the most powerful nation on earth that day in 1775, more than a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed.  Fifty of them made the ultimate sacrifice.

That is courage; the courage of men and women who loved Liberty more than life. This is the America that we must reclaim and preserve.

It starts by eliminating the Leftists from all levels of our government on November 6.

“It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter.  Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace.  The war is actually begun!  The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!  Our brethren are already in the field!  Why stand we here idle?  What is it that gentlemen wish?  What would they have?  Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?  Forbid it, Almighty God!  I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

~Patrick Henry, Second Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775

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©2012 Alden L. Benton/Independence Creek Enterprises
All Rights Reserved

The Spirit of ‘Common Sense’

By Alden L. Benton

“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”  ~Thomas Paine

America is collapsing under the cruel yoke of an ever-expanding, tyrannical government.  Our personal freedoms, our very liberty as free men and women, are in imminent danger. 

The Constitution that governed our government for more than two centuries is at best, misinterpreted, at worst ignored.  The government of “We, the people,” a government which derives its power from the consent of the governed is out of control. 

Enough!

The president has become a de facto king.  He continues to ignore or circumvent the Constitution to get his way.  Congress?  Forget Congress, Obama appoints czars and makes the rules he think we should live by.  The Courts?  Forget the Courts too.  Obama only obeys the laws he likes, the laws that support his nation-killing agenda and will ignore any ruling that does not suit his needs.

Obama is every bit a dictator, an imperial tyrant ruling by his personal whim, as King George III was 235 years ago. 

It was on this day 235 years ago, that Thomas Paine published one of the most influential American revolutionary pamphlets: Common Sense.  Pamphlets and broadsides spread the seeds of discontent and Thomas Paine was a master of the language of revolution. 

It is time for a second American revolution.  Blogs, Twitter tweets, and Facebook posts will sow the seeds of this second revolution. 

We may have elected the present-day tyrant, but he has done more than any other president in history to destroy not only the letter of the Constitution, but its spirit.  As King George before him, we must depose King Obama.  

While the focus is on who will we select as president, the 2012 election is about taking America back.

The exceptional, strong, free, and prosperous nation that was America will not survive four more years under Obama’s thumb.  We will all become slaves of the state. 

However, while we must depose our king, we must also install in Congress principled people of reason and integrity who will reclaim the government for the governed — the people.  It is time to throw the bums out and take an axe to the government. 

This year we have a chance for a do-over, to start again and move forward.  We must rekindle the revolutionary spirit of 1776; the defiance expressed in Common Sense. 

We must choose wisely.  We must ignore the hype and hoopla of the campaigns.  We must ignore the lies and distortions of the mainstream media. 

Finally, we must educate ourselves.  Use the internet.  It is the world’s biggest library.  Become well versed in current trends and events, but learn their historical roots and underpinnings as well.

We all live full and busy lives.  Collecting the information to become an informed citizen is time consuming, even daunting.  However, without that information; without truly informed and educated citizens, we are doomed to failure as a nation. 

I will do my best to bring issues to your attention, quote and refer you to sources, and even suggest actions. 

However, in the end it is up to you to make the right choices.  The future of America depends on those choices.

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”  ~Thomas Paine

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Original blog material © 2011/2012 by Alden L. Benton/Independence Creek Enterprises.