The Shattered Legacy of the Founding Fathers
We’re one year away from the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It remains one of the most impactful and revolutionary documents ever written. While our horrific leaders still pay infrequent lip service to it, they obviously don’t remotely believe in the sentiments expressed by Thomas Jefferson.
The delineation of God-given rights, as opposed to any granted by a government, was a literary nuclear bomb. This resonated with the American colonists, who almost all believed strongly in God. Now, of course, since probably half of present day Americans at least doubt the existence of God, it becomes a much harder proposition to sell. God-given rights mean nothing to those who don’t believe in God. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would eventually translate into the Bill of Rights, which made the Constitution palatable to anti-statists like Jefferson. I still don’t know why two of my other revolutionary era heroes, Patrick Henry and George Mason, didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence. Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights greatly influenced Jefferson. Mason would lose his friendship with George Washington later when he refused to sign the Constitution, because it hadn’t added the Bill of Rights.
I’ve detailed a lot of hidden history about the Founding of this republic in my books Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776-1963 and American Memory Hole. Thomas Paine stoked the sentiments of the average colonist with his remarkable little fifty page pamphlet Common Sense. He would be jailed during the French Revolution for opposing the violence of the revolutionaries, and grew bitter at Washington when he refused to ask for his release. Paine eventually became so obscure that only six people attended his funeral, and it is still unknown where his human remains are. James Otis, who came up with that whole “no taxation without representation” thing, was struck dead by lightning as he stood in a doorway. Remarkably, he had expressed a desire to exit the world in such an unlikely manner. The list of hardships th
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
