Saturday, June 05, 2004

A Timeless Indictment

The authors of the Declaration of Independence, if they were writing it today, would be able to list "a long train of abuses and usurpations" by the federal government against the States and the people. Their list could rightly include these charges, once levelled against the British monarch:
...erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people and eat out their substance....

...combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws....

...[took] away our [State] charters...and alter[ed] fundamentally the forms of our governments....