Posted on 10/20/2011 12:07:53 PM PDT by FritzG
Was the Declaration of Independence legal?
In Philadelphia, American and British lawyers have debated the legality of America's founding documents.
On Tuesday night, while Republican candidates in Nevada were debating such American issues as nuclear waste disposal and the immigration status of Mitt Romney's gardener, American and British lawyers in Philadelphia were taking on a far more fundamental topic.
Namely, just what did Thomas Jefferson think he was doing?
Some background: during the hot and sweltering summer of 1776, members of the second Continental Congress travelled to Philadelphia to discuss their frustration with royal rule.
By 4 July, America's founding fathers approved a simple document penned by Jefferson that enumerated their grievances and announced themselves a sovereign nation.
Called the Declaration of Independence, it was a blow for freedom, a call to war, and the founding of a new empire.
It was also totally illegitimate and illegal.
At least, that was what lawyers from the UK argued during a debate at Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Hall.
American experiment
The event, presented by the Temple American Inn of Court in conjunction with Gray's Inn, London, pitted British barristers against American lawyers to determine whether or not the American colonists had legal grounds to declare secession.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
At the time it was rule .69 mostly.
There was a war.
We won.
That's how it works.
Get over it, already.
Refer to Benjamin Franklin's quote:
"We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately ..."
I think you missed my point.
The Founders knew that the acts they were engaging in would be considered high treason by the King, and yet they went ahead with it anyway. That is one of many things that makes the American Revolution so awesome.
I don’t consider it treason. I consider it liberation.
Okay, I misread you, and we are in agreement that it was not treason.
However, I believe the cabal led by Grenville KNEW FULL WELL that what they were trying to pull off with respect to extracting moneys from the Americans grossly violated their constitutional rights and that the resistance by the Sons of Liberty groups and ultimately armed defense was NOT treason.
Their mindset was similar to that of progressives today - they viewed ordinary Americans with condescension, they believed their vision of an intellectual elite based in Whitehall administering a global trading empire benefiting all involved (in their view) justified taking the property of Americans to pay for the expenses of the empire with little attention paid to the procedural niceties of actually asking and receiving the permission of those Americans before taking their property.
"That 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."
Yep, and the FReepers who keep saying our states cannot secede from the Union only need to read those words to know that we have the right and only need the will to do so. The secession of the confederate states was legal the war started by the North was not. The south lacked the ability to win out but they still acted legally, maybe for the wrong reason but still they had the right.
Winners write the rules and the history books.
Thanks FritzG.
Look at it this way...It took 235 years to get a group of these yahoos to gether to “question” it...
Whatever they come up with in their analysis, I still like our chances...
Besides, who has the nads to come and take us on it???
I still like our chances...
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