Two hundred and forty-three years ago, "a bunch of guys got together ... and they wrote a letter to their king. It was a very thought out and very eloquent letter, but it basically boiled down to this: 'Dear King George, You're not the boss of us. Sincerely, A bunch of trouble-makers."
Larken Rose gave this speech ten years ago near the location where those men signed the Declaration of Independence. It has become an annual tradition for me to watch the video on this day.
"For all the parades and celebrations and picnics and fireworks that are going to go on today across this country, all the millions of people engaged in this celebration, how many of them actually think about what the Declaration of Independence was, what those people did. Those people were criminals. They were tax cheats. They were traitors. They looked their government, the British crown, in the face and said, ‘We do not acknowledge your right to rule us at all.’ They did not say, ‘Will you please reduce this and please be nicer here?’ They said, ‘It's over.’”
"How many people celebrating across this country today actually support that kind of radical, extremist action and attitude that you can go to your own government and say, ‘We're not going to obey you anymore. We do not acknowledge your right to rule us at all ever again.’? Personally, I doubt it's very many Americans."
“We have lots of sort of residual freedoms left over from what a bunch of radicals did a long time ago … The bad news is the spirit that allowed this country is basically dead in the vast majority of Americans. The vast majority of Americans are absolutely incapable of thinking, much less speaking, the concept, ‘You're not the boss of me.’”
“Now when we look back it's easy for us to cheer, “hooray,” for the rebels. We know how it turned out. We know they won. We know the Revolution was successful and King George got his butt kicked. So we can say, “Yay, yay, hooray.” But make no mistake when you cheer for the people who had the American Revolution, you are cheering for traitors and criminals. They broke the law. Freedom is always illegal. Let this one thing sink in if you don't hear anything else, freedom is always illegal because the people who want power over you will always say, ‘Keeping what you earn is against the law. Being armed is against the law. Determining your own future is against the law.’ How many Americans, as much as they celebrate Independence Day, are capable of even thinking those thoughts?”
“Those men believed in something called unalienable rights. That means you have a right to do something. If the law says you can't do it, you still have the right to do it. If the government says you can't do it, you still have the right to do it. Unalienable means nothing anyone in the world can do takes away your right to do that. Now they can infringe on that right, which they do on a regular basis. They can stomp on you and they can hurt you and they can punish you, but it will never be legitimate and nobody should ever bow.”
“Now some people, every once in a while, will say, ‘Well, it was really oppressive back in 1776 and we're just not quite to that point yet.’ If 2 to 3 percent taxation justified a revolution in 1776, why doesn't 50% and growing justify a revolution? If the few little excise taxes on pieces of paper and tea justified open lawlessness from these rebels that we're all celebrating, why don't the myriad of incomprehensible, unavoidable, crushing taxes … justify revolution today?”
“Your obligation is to judge right and wrong for yourselves and to act accordingly. And if somebody says, ‘No, no, no, I’m the boss. I'm in charge. I'm the authority. I lay down the law. You do this.’ You have the right to say, ‘No, I'm not going to do the wrong thing just because the law tells me to.’ And when they huff and puff and say, ‘You're nasty criminals and … horrible people that you would dare to disobey authority.’ You tell them, ‘You’re not the boss of me.’”
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