Jesus would not have endorsed the Democratic Socialists of America | Opinion

Peter Crabb
Wed, July 15, 2026 at 6:00 AM EDT

Peter Crabb

In the same year that Americans are celebrating the Declaration of Independence and the principles of liberty found there, members of the Democratic Socialists of America are making political gains.

At my institution and in churches around the country, Christians are revisiting an old question: Was Jesus the first socialist? The idea is appealing to many of my students and fellow followers of Jesus.

Our Lord's emphasis on helping the poor and the first disciples' sharing of resources in the book of Acts suggests a natural alignment with the tenets of socialism. However, discussions around these teachings ignore the central characteristics of socialism; that is, the use of force.

Economic studies of government laws and policies always seek to distinguish between the "seen" and the "unseen." Economists ask both the question of what the immediate effects of a government policy will be but also ask what the likely unintended consequences are of the same.

What is seen in Jesus's teaching is a call to radical generosity. What is unseen by many readers of this teaching is that the call was always directed at the individual's heart, not the Roman authority or tax collector. Socialism is defined by the concentration of power to forcibly achieve a redistribution of wealth. Socialist policies are not voluntary but rather coercive, resulting from a monopoly power the government holds over the use of force.

There is no evidence that Jesus endorsed the forcible redistribution of wealth by political authorities. When confronted with a question about the distribution of a family's wealth, Jesus replied by asking who appointed him a judge or arbiter and instead cautioned against envy (Luke 12).

Pope Leo Receives Liberty Medal and Makes Address for America's 250th Anniversary

 

There are Plenty of Religious Underpinnings to Our Founding

(Terrance Emerson/Dreamstime.com)

By Jerry Newcombe

Friday, 27 March 2026 04:56 PM EDT


Sometimes we are led to believe today that the Founding Fathers of America were men of the Enlightenment, meaning that, for the most part, they were not believers in Jesus.

But that’s not true that they were mostly skeptics.

There were a few, but they were the exception — not the rule.

And besides, Enlightenment thinkers, like Montesquieu, Sir William Blackstone, and John Locke — whose writings were important to America's Founders — were professing Christians, who often based their arguments on the Bible.

250 years ago from this month, the Continental Congress — the same men that would adopt the Declaration of Independence by voice vote on July 4 — proclaimed a Day of Prayer for the fledgling nation-to-be.

This was no namby-pamby, "To Whom It May Concern," - type prayer — that we’re so often used to today. This was a bold Christian document by professing Christians, representing a population back home that was 99.8% professing Christians.

In that proclamation of a Day of Fasting, Prayer, and Humiliation, March 16, 1776, the founders declared, "In times of impending calamity and distress; when the liberties of America are imminently endangered by the secret machinations and open assaults of an insidious and vindictive administration, it becomes the indispensable duty of these hitherto free and happy colonies, with true penitence of heart, and the most reverent devotion, publicly to acknowledge the over ruling providence of God."

Based on this opening paragraph and other writings of the times, they said: We used to be happy and enjoy life here in these British colonies in North America.

We enjoyed our rights as Englishmen. Rights that dated back to the Magna Charta in 1215, which were affirmed in the British Bill of Rights of 1689.

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God Complex: The Rise Of America's Censorship Machine

 

God Complex: The Rise Of America's Censorship Machine

Big Picture Originals 

Streamed live on Oct 16, 2025

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For generations, Americans have believed the First Amendment was untouchable — the cornerstone of our Republic. 

But today, that freedom is under attack. Behind closed doors, government agencies, Big Tech, universities, and NGOs built a powerful system to control what citizens can say, hear, and believe. 

This is not speculation. It is a documented reality — and it strikes at the heart of our liberty. 

God Complex: The Rise of America’s Censorship Machine is a Big Picture Originals documentary that reveals how this system came to be, how it operates, and why every American who values freedom must pay attention. 

Because when free speech is silenced, the truth disappears — and with it, every other right we hold dear. 

God Complex premieres on October 16. 

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Alex Newman: Demonic Forces, America’s Battle for Liberty, and Decentralization

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Westphalian Sovereignty

Westphalian Sovereignty

Westphalian sovereignty, sometimes known as state sovereignty, refers to the premise that each state possesses exclusive sovereignty over the territory that it controls.

TABLE OF CONTENT
Challenges to Westphalia
Defenders of Westphalia
The meaning of Westphalian


The principle is enshrined in the United Nations Charter, which states that it forms the basis of the modern international system of sovereign states and that it “shall not be infringed.”

“Nothing… shall give the United Nations the authority to intervene in matters that are fundamentally within the purview of the domestic jurisdiction of any particular state.

The concept maintains that every state, regardless of its size, possesses an equal claim to the freedom to exercise sovereignty. According to political scientists, the idea dates back to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which put an end to both the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) and the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) The idea that one should stay out of other people’s business was refined during the 18th century.The Westphalian system reached its zenith in the 19th and 20th centuries, but in more recent times, it has come up against opposition from proponents of humanitarian intervention.

Challenges to Westphalia

Following the conclusion of the Cold War, there was a rise in international integration and, one could argue, a decrease in Westphalian sovereignty. A significant portion of the available literature was principally devoted to the criticism of realist models of international politics.

These are the types of models in which the concept of the state as a unitary agency is accepted as an axiomatic statement.In 1998, during a Symposium on the Continuing Political Relevance of the Peace of Westphalia,

NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana stated that “humanity and democracy [were] two principles that [were] essentially irrelevant to the original Westphalian order.” He also levelled the criticism that the original Westphalian order did not adequately account for human rights and democracy.

“The Westphalian system was not without its deficiencies.

To begin, the notion of sovereignty that it relied on likewise produced the framework for rivalry, rather than a community of states; moreover,

it produced the premise for exclusion, rather than integration.”

Tony Blair, then the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, delivered a speech in Chicago in the year 1999 in which he “laid out a new, post-Westphalian,

‘Doctrine of the international community.'” Blair contended that globalisation had rendered the Westphalian method obsolete in this modern day.

After some time had passed,

The Daily Telegraph referred to Blair as “the man who brought in the post-Westphalian period.” Others have made the claim that the Westphalian system has been rendered obsolete as a result of globalisation.

Check out the complete UPSC Syllabus

Defenders of Westphalia

In spite of the fact that the Westphalian system was initially formed in early modern Europe, its most ardent supporters can currently be found in non-Western countries. In a declaration issued together in 2001, the leaders of China and Russia made a solemn commitment to “Concepts such as “humanitarian intervention” and “limited sovereignty”

Can be used to combat efforts that are being made to undermine the fundamental rules of international law.

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The meaning of “Westphalian”

The European settlements of 1648 known as the Peace of Westphalia were responsible for bringing an end to both the German portion of the Thirty Years’ War and the Eighty Years’ War that had been raging between Spain and the Dutch. Beginning in the year 1644, the peace was negotiated in the cities of Münster and Osnabrück in the state of Westphalia.

The treaty between the Spanish and Dutch was signed on January 30th, 1648. The Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III, together with the other German princes, France, and Sweden, were all parties to the treaty that was signed on October 24, 1648.The only European powers that did not have a representative present at either of the two sessions were England, Poland, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire.

Read about UPSC Notes

The significance of the Treaty of Westphalia

Before one can begin to comprehend the importance of the Treaty of Westphalia, one needs to have a solid grounding in the background of the Protestant Reformation. A person who “protests” against the theology that is taught in Catholic churches is known as a Protestant. Martin Luther, a German theologian, was opposed to the doctrine as well as the practises of the Catholic Church.

As a result, he established his own denomination of Christianity, which is now known as Lutheranism. During the course of the following century, millions of Europeans abandoned the Catholic Church in favour of one of the numerous newly established Protestant faiths.

This movement resulted in a series of terrible conflicts across Europe between leaders of the Protestant and Catholic faiths.The most significant of these wars was the Thirty Years’ War, which took place between 1618 and 1648 and was fought mostly inside the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire.

Conclusion

This is a term that is used in international affairs and is said to have originated from the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648, which put an end to the Thirty Years War. It is commonly understood to refer to a network of states or an international society that is made up of sovereign state entities that hold the monopoly on the use of force inside their own boundaries, which are acknowledged by each other.

The official diplomatic relationships that exist between the heads of state and governments are what are used to conduct international relations. International law is comprised of the treaties that are created (and broken) by the various sovereign entities that make up the world.


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Founding Fathers - The Threat of Tyranny

Batr Sartre

Published on Jun 20, 2014

Quotes of the Founding Fathers

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Feinstein: CIA searched Intelligence Committee computers

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Video: Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) accused the CIA of breaking the law by searching her committee's computers. The Post's Karen Tumulty, Scott Wilson, Terence Samuel and Adam Goldman explain the impact in Washington.




By Greg Miller, Ed O’Keefe and Adam Goldman, Published: March 11

A behind-the-scenes battle between the CIA and Congress erupted in public Tuesday as the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the agency of breaking laws and breaching constitutional principles in an alleged effort to undermine the panel’s multi-year investigation of a controversial interrogation program.

Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) accused the CIA of ­secretly removing documents, searching computers used by the committee and attempting to intimidate congressional investigators by requesting an FBI inquiry of their conduct — charges that CIA Director John Brennan disputed within hours of her appearance on the Senate floor.




Video




Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) questioned whether a CIA search of congressional records might have undermined government oversight during a Senate floor speech Tuesday.

Read more:

Why the CIA and lawmakers are feuding




Adam Goldman MAR 11

What you need to know about the dispute over an investigation o the agency’s interrogation program.

Transcript: Feinstein says CIA searched Intelligence panel computers




MAR 11

“Let me say up front that I come to the Senate floor reluctantly,” she said.

Transcript: Brennan says his agency has done nothing wrong


MAR 11

“If I did something wrong, I will go to the president and I will explain to him exactly what I did and what the findings were,” he said.

Senators praise Feinstein speech, want answers from CIA




Wesley Lowery and Ed O'Keefe MAR 11

If true, “this is Richard Nixon stuff,” one senator says.

Feinstein described the escalating conflict as a “defining moment” for Congress’s role in overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies and cited “grave concerns” that the CIA had “violated the separation-of-powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution.”

Brennan fired back during a previously scheduled speech in Washington, saying that “when the facts come out on this, I think a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.”

The dueling claims exposed bitterness and distrust that have soared to new levels as the committee nears completion of a 6,000-page report that is expected to serve as a scathing historical record of the agency’s use of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation methods on terrorism suspects held at secret CIA prisons overseas after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Displaying flashes of anger during her floor speech, Feinstein said her committee would soon deliver the report to the White House and push for declassification of a document that lays bare “the horrible details of the CIA program that never, never, never should have existed.”

The latest dispute is in some ways a proxy for a deeper conflict over that document. The CIA and the committee are at odds over many of the report’s conclusions about the effectiveness of the interrogation program, but they are battling primarily over tension that surfaced during the investigation.

Feinstein’s remarks provided the most detailed account of that investigation, describing an arrangement in which the CIA set up a secret facility in Northern Virginia with computers where committee investigators were promised unfettered access to millions of operational cables, executive memos and other files on the interrogation program.

The disagreement between Feinstein and Brennan centers on whether agency employees or committee staff members — or both — abused their access to that shared network to gain an upper hand.

Feinstein implied that the CIA sabotaged the committee’s efforts from the outset, loading a massive amount of files on computers with no index, structure or ability to search. “It was a true document dump,” she said.

Over a period of years, investigators pored over more than 6.2 million classified records furnished by the CIA, using a search tool that agency technical experts agreed to install. But U.S. officials said the committee gained access to a set of documents that the agency never intended to share, files that were generated at the direction of former director Leon E. Panetta as part of an effort to take an inventory of the records being turned over to Feinstein’s panel.

The two sides have engaged in heated exchanges in recent days over the nature of those files and how they were obtained.

Referring to them as the “Panetta internal review,” Feinstein insisted that committee staff members discovered the documents during an ordinary search of the trove. She said they are particularly valuable because in tracking the flow of documents, CIA employees in some cases drew conclusions about their contents that match the subsequent interpretations made by committee staff members.
Jeremy Bash, Panetta’s former chief of staff, said Tuesday that that was never the director's intent. Panetta “did not request an internal review of the interrogation program,” he said. “He asked the CIA staff to keep track of documents that were being provided. . . . He asked that they develop short summaries of the material, so that we would know what was being provided.”

Meanwhile, a letter that Brennan distributed to the CIA workforce on Tuesday raised questions about Feinstein’s claims and her awareness of how and when the committee obtained what she is calling the Panetta review files.

The letter, which Brennan sent to Feinstein on Jan. 27 and which was attached to a message he sent the workforce, recounts a meeting they had weeks earlier to discuss the matter. During that meeting, Feinstein said she didn’t know that the committee already had copies of the Panetta review. Brennan pushed her to explain why the panel had recently requested the files when they were already in its possession.

“You informed me that you were not aware that the committee staff already had access to the materials you had requested,” Brennan wrote, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post. Brennan urged Feinstein to work with the agency to determine how the committee had obtained the documents, a request she ultimately rejected, officials said.

The CIA began to suspect that the panel had obtained those files this year after lawmakers referred to the supposed “internal review” publicly. U.S. officials said CIA security personnel then checked the logs of the computer system it had set up for the committee, and found that the files had been moved to a part of the network that was off-limits to the CIA.

“They did something to get those documents,” said a U.S. official briefed on the matter. A security “firewall was breached. They figured out a work-around to get it.” The official declined to elaborate.
Feinstein said the review documents were “identified using the search tool provided by the CIA” but she was careful not to say precisely how they were obtained. “We don’t know whether the documents were provided intentionally by the CIA, unintentionally by the CIA, or intentionally by a whistleblower,” she said.

She acknowledged, however, that committee investigators made hard copies of those files and whisked them away to its offices on Capitol Hill, in part because the committee had previously seen cases in which more than 900 pages of records dis­appeared from the database with no explanation.
Feinstein expressed outrage that the CIA referred the matter to the FBI. “There is no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice Department that Senate staff may have committed a crime,” she said, describing the move as a “potential effort to intimidate this staff, and I am not taking it lightly.”
She also noted that the referral was made by Robert Eatinger, the CIA’s acting general counsel, who previously served as the top lawyer for the department that ran the CIA’s secret prisons, and who “is mentioned by name more than 1,600 times in our study.”

Feinstein, who has been a staunch supporter of other CIA programs including its drone campaign, said the agency may have violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, as well as laws against domestic surveillance.

Although Republicans on the committee initially voted in favor of opening the investigation, GOP members abandoned the effort after it began and none has voted to endorse it.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the intelligence panel, told Bloomberg News that the dispute is “more complicated than what’s being put out there by Senator Feinstein or others. . . . I don’t think anyone has a clean hand and I think it’s important for the full truth to come out. I think people may be surprised to learn that, in this case, there were no good guys and maybe two or three bad ones.”

[Read a full transcript of Feinstein’s remarks.]

Brennan said he had ordered the CIA’s inspector general to review the agency’s conduct. The inspector general, in turn, has issued a separate referral seeking a Justice Department review.

Asked whether he would resign if the CIA was found to be in the wrong, Brennan said he would let the president decide his fate. “If I did something wrong, I will go to the president,” the director said. “He is the one who can ask me to stay or to go.”



Ellen Nakashima and Julie Tate contributed to this report.


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Above the Law: Secret Deals, Political Fixes, and Other Misadventures of the U.S. Department of Justice

David Burnham
Above the Law: Secret Deals, Political Fixes, and Other Misadventures of the U.S. Department of Justice
Scribner, 1996
ISBN 0-684-80699-1
444 pages, $27.50 hb.
Reviewed by Gary McGath
This review copyright 1996 by Gary McGath


The Department of Justice wields a great amount of power; and as our government as a whole grows more powerful and abusive of our liberties, it is only to be expected that many of these abuses will be found in its law enforcement apparatus. David Burnham has provided an illuminating account of some of these abuses.

Burnham's political sympathies clearly lie toward the left side of the conventional political spectrum, but he addresses his subject matter with a minimum of bias. For example, in discussing the Senate's investigation of Watergate, he points out that previous Presidents, notably Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, had also made use of the FBI for their own political purposes, obtaining background checks on their opponents and leaking information to influence campaigns.

Some of Burnham's views are disturbing. For instance, he notes that two-thirds of the corporations in a survey violated environmental laws, in the opinion of their own lawyers; but rather than thinking that there might be something wrong with a system of laws which makes the large majority of the affected parties criminals, he appears to take this as evidence that not enough businesses are being prosecuted. But the fact that Burnham provides enough facts to support arguments against his own conclusions does illustrate his thoroughness.

Both Democratic and Republican administrations come under scrutiny. Burnham condemns Jimmy Carter's orders to expel Iranian students en masse and Bill Clinton's exploitation of the Oklahoma City bombing to promote "antiterrorism" legislation which "had very little to do with terrorism," as well as Ronald Reagan's alleged violation of tax laws and Richard Nixon's many manipulations. And he gives credit where due to Republican actions, such as Rep. Henry Hyde's strong opposition to the excesses of civil forfeiture. (Yes, this is the same Hyde who wrote language into the Telecommunications Act outlawing the posting of information about abortion. His name seems eerily appropriate.)

The discussion of the FBI's attempts to increase its surveillance capabilities and reduce the privacy of citizens will be of special interest to most of the online readers of this review. Burnham discusses the efforts to make the key-escrowed Clipper chip the de facto standard for encryption, Louis Freeh's campaign to outlaw strong encryption and obtain a vast expansion of federal wiretapping capability, and the sweeping use of telephone call logs to gain information on anyone who calls or is called by a suspect. The book argues that Freeh has used distorted statistics to make the crime problem look worse than it is; while its does not directly tie this to Freeh's claims that encryption will frustrate legitimate law enforcement efforts, the material in the book provides at least a starting point for casting doubt on the FBI chief's arguments.

In discussing the War on Drugs, Burnham takes a conventional liberal position; he does not dispute the legitimacy of laws criminalizing people's choice to ingest certain substances, but he recognizes that the enforcement of anti-drug laws is ineffective in stopping drug abuse, especially harsh on some ethnic groups, and often detrimental to people's liberties. He notes that intensive anti-drug efforts have often let crimes against people increase by diverting enforcement resources. He also points out the rapidly growing cost to the taxpayer: "For the Justice Department alone, spending for drug-control purposes has grown at an astonishing pace, increasing more than eleven times, from $360 million in 1981 to slightly more than $4 billion in 1994."

The current Attorney General also comes in for criticism; for example, Burnham notes that Janet Reno has spoken in favor of arbitrary sentencing disparities in drug laws and has defended the practice of seizing the assets of people who have not been convicted of any crime. Curiously, there is no mention of the Waco siege, although other examples of stormtrooper justice are cited.

Above the Law is heavy but rewarding reading for those who want to learn more about how the growth of government power has injured our liberties. While I do not agree with all of Burnham's conclusions, I think he has presented a compelling and well-documented case that the government officials who are charged with protecting us from crime are often the ones from whom we are most in need of protection.


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Rule of Law Threatened by Executive Orders ·

 February 05, 2014 Posted: February 6, 2014




Prophetic Intelligence Briefings

 

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has said President Obama is “dangerous and terrifying” and uses a pattern of “lawlessness on a breathtaking scale” He also said even liberal Democrats will come to regret when a future president seeks to exercise similar unbridled power.

Cruz is concerned about the loss of the rule of law in America and the rise of rule by decree. “We are a nation of laws and not men,” said Cruz. “If we had a system where a president can pick and choose what laws to follow at utter whim… that is seriously dangerous.”

Cruz said the media does not accurately report the threat to liberty. “If you love liberty, that should concern you greatly,” said Cruz. “If this president has that power so does the next one and the next one and the next one,” he added. He also said that Democrats should be very concerned about this practice. What if the next president is a Republican and has all that power, and “who is not bound by the law?”

Meanwhile, President Obama told the nation in his annual State of the Union address on January 28 that if he doesn’t get congressional cooperation, he would use executive action in 2014 to make it a “year of action.”

But President Obama is not the first president to use executive orders. The practice goes all the way back to the first president of the United States, George Washington. Franklin D. Roosevelt holds the record for the most executive orders by a sitting president at 3522. Recent presidents, both Democrat and Republican, continue to use them to bypass Congress, the courts and the constitution. The rise of the use of executive orders is partly a consequence of a deadlocked and polarized Congress, which gives the president the excuse to expand his power.

The rule of law has been fading away with the use of executive orders by successive presidents. And executive orders appear to be increasingly used for major issues of law and policy rather than administrative uses. They are essentially decrees.

The prophetic point is that it is laying the foundation for the fulfillment of the following statements regarding the Sunday law. Could executive action be the vehicle by which those loyal to the Ten Commandments will come under condemnation of human laws?

“Fearful is the issue to which the world is to be brought. The powers of earth, uniting to war against the commandments of God, will decree that “all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond” (Revelation 13:16), shall conform to the customs of the church by the observance of the false Sabbath [Sunday]. All who refuse compliance will be visited with civil penalties, and it will finally be declared that they are deserving of death.” Great Controversy, page 604

“A decree will finally be issued against those who hallow the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, denouncing them as deserving of the severest punishment and giving the people liberty, after a certain time, to put them to death. Romanism in the Old World and apostate Protestantism in the New will pursue a similar course toward those who honor all the divine precepts.” Great Controversy, page 612-613



Lesson #21



The USA in Bible Prophecy.

Can it really be true? America in Bible prophecy – absolutely! When you think about it, it makes sense that the most powerful and influential nation on earth will play a vital role in the final stunning events of the world’s closing history. But even more surprises await you as the Bible reveals how the leading nation of the world came to exist and why! Please read Revelation 13:11-18 before begi…


Read More

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President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address

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"Man’s relation with his God is above human legislation"...

In that grand old document which our forefathers set forth as their bill of rights — the Declaration of Independence —they declared: “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.” And the Constitution guarantees, in the most explicit terms, the inviolability of conscience: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his rights of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to establish this truth; we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to God was superior to human enactments, and that man could exercise no authority over their consciences. It is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate.”
— Congressional documents (U.S.A.), serial No. 200, document No. 271.

The Great Controversy, p. 295.
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The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen 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. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

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.

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.

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.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

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.

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.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

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:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

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

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

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.

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.

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.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

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