A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Yesterday's email from a friend prompted to me to go back and once again read our Declaration of Independence. I highly recommend the experience. Not just the preamble. We are all familiar with that memorable opening phrase, ''When in the course of human events," but I am talking about reading the entire document, word for word. This was the first time I have done so since January 20, 2017.

I have not read the president's speech delivered on July 4, 2019 to a rain-soaked audience, while he was standing in an enclosed bulletproof transparent cube in front of the Lincoln Memorial, flagged by military tanks with warplanes roaring overhead. It certainly would have been appropriate for our President to quote from some sections of our Founding Document. On the chance he did not, I have culled pertinent quotes and offer them for your consideration. My italicized explanatory emendations are presented in brackets:

"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of [a majority of] the governed

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it

When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the citizenry] under absolute despotism ... It is their duty to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their security

The history of the present king.... Is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations:

He has refused his assent to laws

He has forbidden his governors [e.g., the U.S. Senate majority leadership] to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance

He has ... obstructed the laws for naturalization of foreigners

He has obstructed the administration of justice

He has made judges dependent on his will alone

He has the sent swarms of [ICE] officers to harass

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution

He has cut off our trade with all parts of the world

In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress ... . 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."

Powerful words crafted in 1776. Now, 243 years later, our job is to Make America Great Again.

A bientot.