July 4th, 2016

By Jim Culp

Well, it is finally July of this year we call 2016. Today, citizens and recent immigrants of the United States of America will celebrate with grilled foods of all types, sodas and fireworks for the kids, and large amounts of fermented and distilled beverages.

It is also a time when our government is more and more like a great shadow of  fear and doubt, hanging over our heads like a dark cloud. One would think that a tax paying citizen of the USA nowadays would have little to worry about.

Our population currently stands at 323,900,521; with a new immigrant entering the country at a rate of every 29 seconds. There is a new birth about every 8 seconds, and a death about every 13 seconds, so this all evens out at a fair rate. What statistics don't show, or struggle to quantify, is the rate of undocumented immigrants (sometimes called "illegal aliens") entering our country at astounding rates, and merging into our society without paying taxes, obtaining permits or licenses, or sharing the load of society.

But let's travel back 241 years. In those days, thirteen colonies had merged themselves into a unified group called the United Colonies; thirteen states called Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations. These were British colonies, all located on the Eastern Coast of North America, and to the West were territories called the Indian Reserve, a massive area of land that reached from the southern tip of East Florida to the 49th Parallel north of the Great Lakes. The West border was called the Proclamation Line of 1763, and made the statement that the Thirteen Colonies were separate from what Spain or other countries would make claim to.

Their capital was London, England, where a young monarch named King George the III sat on the throne, and demanded high taxes from the colonies.

The Colonists adopted a policy of "no taxation without representation", and declared themselves independent of Great Britain in 1775. On July 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed, and the War for Independence, a struggle that would last for eight bloody years, in which many men would lose their lives for the cause of freedom to be independent. Over 6,000 colonists would lose their lives in this conflict, and thousands of her allies from France and the Netherlands would be lost. Many thousands on both sides would die from diseases, starvation, and cold weather injuries.

I related that all to you so that I could make a point that needed re-stating in these times of mistrust and government greed.

The War for Independence was fought because a government couldn't be trusted to provide valid and proper representation for colonies that it would so heavily levy taxes of ridiculous proportions. It wanted to tax people unreasonably, and use that wealth to it's own greedy means and for other purposes than what the people would gladly pay taxes for; you know, like better schools, a protective militia, and an overall quality of life that we called the "pursuit of happiness"..

In this year we call 2016, we pay federal taxes to a government in a city called Washington, in a area called the District of Columbia, where 435 Representatives and 100 Senators gather in big stone buildings and decide how we live and what freedoms we have on a fairly regular basis. Taxes are levied every year to pay for things that they simply don't, and hundreds of corrupt politicians and lobbyists shift money behind the scenes that would put the thugs in GoodFellas to shame.

They send billions of dollars to other countries, and promise billions more; while our highways and national parks fall into decay. Millions of undocumented immigrants enter our nation every year, and our government responds by allowing them to draw benefits from the government that they never paid into or contributed to in any way. Millions of people who do not work are paid benefits every month, and spend their lives doing so, because they can.

Churches take in millions of dollars per year as non taxable entities, yet do absolutely nothing for the poor, or the sick, or the dying....you know, like their founders commanded them to do. They just get rich, and richer, and talk about how God has blessed them.  

It is sufficient to say that our society has degraded to the point that we are in need of new government, and new leaders. People rant and rave daily about the gross negligence of our governments, both State and Federal, but actually do very little about it except to go to a voting booth each November and cast a vote for yet another corrupt bureaucrat that will do the same things as his predecessors, not what the electorate wanted him to do.

The time has come for revolution. No, that notion does not make me a terrorist, it simply reveals me as what I have always been; a patriot.