The Prior Authorization of the Declaration of Independence
What if our founding fathers had to call for prior authorization first?
Happy 4th! Every year, I do a Declaration of Independence-themed parody. Last year was about TMS treatments. It is also funny.
This year…
Reviewer: Hello, I understand your call is about some concerns you have for your colonies?
Founding Father: When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,
Reviewer: So you're looking to obtain coverage for a revolution event? Have you reviewed the freedom necessity criteria prior to this revolution?
Founding Father: we have reviewed the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them…
Reviewer: Look, I understand you feel entitled to freedom, but we have a coverage policy review here. What prior steps towards freedom have you attempted? The policy requires you to declare the causes which impel you to the separation.
Founding Father: We hold these truths to be self-evident…
Reviewer: You certainly have the right to your opinion, but we have a policy document to navigate here. Please address the terms of the policy that you feel entitle you to freedom?
Founding Father: 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.
Reviewer: Yes, of course, you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, subject to prior authorization. Keep in mind, prior authorization is not a guarantee of life, or liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, or payment for the above, but you have the right to choose the pursuit of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness, after prior authorization is obtained, this is clearly spelled out in your plan document. What have you done to secure these rights?
Founding Father: Well, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…
Reviewer: subject prior authorization...
Founding Father: …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.
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Reviewer: Are you going to address any of the Revolution Necessity Criteria specified in your contract? It’s all well and good to assert that it’s your right to abolish the government. Still, if you haven’t provided evidence of prior trials of obtaining a modicum of freedom, I just don’t think coverage of your revolution is going to be a covered benefit. Go on…
Founding Father: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shewn,
Reviewer: I’m sorry, “Shewn?”
Founding Father: It’s the now-English for “shown”…
Reviewer: As you like it, sir, please ….continue.
Founding Father: mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Reviewer: That is the spirit of the contract, yes.
Founding Father: 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.
Reviewer: Of course, your right is to suffer whatever usurpations you choose—we don’t choose that for you, sir. However, these are simply grievances you have decided to endure, and I have no evidence of any attempts to achieve Liberty or the Pursuit of happiness here, good sir.
Founding Father: Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies;
Reviewer: No one told you to suffer. I don’t see how this is relevant.
Founding Father: 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.
Reviewer: Finally, facts!… I assume these are the revolution-necessity criteria and prior trials you are required to present as part of your contract? Go on…
Founding Father: He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
Reviewer: ok…
Founding Father: 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.
Reviewer: That sounds very frustrating…
Founding Father: 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.
Reviewer: This is an opinion, good sir.
Founding Father: 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.
Reviewer: I’m going to let you keep going….
Founding Father: 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 harrass 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:
Reviewer: The king’s plan has a travel and housing benefit for his troops, and you chose to put your apartment on Airbnb…
Founding Father: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
Reviewer: For which he, I’ll point, our, probably obtained prior authorization….are you done?
Founding Father: 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 benefits of Trial by Jury:
Reviewer: Additional benefits that also require prior authorization—have you even read your plan document?
Founding Father: 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.
Reviewer: Ravaging is a plan exclusion.
Founding Father: 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.
Reviewer: Cruel and perfidious care is actually under the specialty revolution benefit. Would you like me to transfer your call?
Founding Father: 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:
Reviewer: This call has not been the most humble…
Founding Father: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
Reviewer: You keep requisitioning a revolution but have no prior trials of liberty. I don’t know what you expect!
Founding Father: 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 Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
Reviewer: Wait, is this revolution from an overseas despot? That makes this easy—your plan only covers revolutions from domestic tyranny. You didn’t purchase the foreign tyrant coverage. Can we wrap this up?
Founding Father: 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;
Reviewer: If you haven't tried partial dissolution… ”totally dissolved” is experimental and unproven in first episode revolutionaries.
Founding Father: 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.
Reviewer: Your revolution is denied. You have the right to file an appeal.
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