France and the American Revolution (Idle Words)#

03.19.2003

Tonight on French Week, France and the American Revolution!

And just in case you don't believe that the Founding Fathers are still relevant to today's America, a little remix of our Declaration of Independence, by that notorious francophile Thomas Jefferson. Different George, same old complaints:

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

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 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 cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring 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; 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.