A Declaration of Resistance

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When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for citizens to resist the immorality and unjust policies of their elected officials and to assume the responsibility of citizens to insist upon a course in keeping with the spirit and the letter of their founding documents, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the resistance.
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all human beings 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. These Rights include those outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international declarations of rights that belong to human beings not by virtue of citizenship but rather by virtue of their humanity. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among human beings, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,–that whenever elected or appointed officials become obstructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to resist and to work to elect new people who will provide policies leading to Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that elected officials ought not to face resistance for light or transient causes, and accordingly all experience has shown that human beings are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by consistent resistance. But when a long train of abuses, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to resist and vote into office different leaders who will Guard their future security in the most expansive sense.
The history of Donald Trump is a history of repeated injuries and lies all having in direct object the weakening of our government and his own advancement at any cost. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He built his political career upon a malignant foundation of a pernicious lie, namely, that President Obama was not born in the United States of America. He lied to the public for years, saying that he had paid investigators to prove that President Obama was not born in the United States. We have neither seen nor heard from any of these investigators.
He ran a fraudulent “university” and conned people out of their hard-earned money.
He is a man who has disrespected women both before, during and after the presidential campaign. He bragged about sexually assaulting women, and when women came forward to say that he had indeed made unwanted physical contact with them, he insulted them personally and threatened law suits. He has called women names, body shaming them, and seems to have an unhealthy obsession with women and blood.
He started his presidential campaign insulting our fellow Mexican American citizens. Throughout the campaign, he has given us a divisive and mendacious discourse. He has debased the public conversation both as a candidate and as president by giving his opponents demeaning names and making fun of them. He called for violence against protestors at his rallies, even at one point offering to pay the legal bills of anyone who was charged with violence against protestors.
He has tried to bully and demean members of the media. Protection of the freedom of the press is enshrined in the first amendment of the United States Constitution. While the Constitution prohibits Congress from making a law that would abridge the freedom of the press, the spirit of the Constitution requires a person who takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution to show respect for members of the media. The media are not the enemy of the people as he has suggested, the media are the people.
He has disrespected judges and the judicial system. As a candidate, he said that a native born judge of Mexican American heritage could not judge his case fairly. Since taking the oath of office, he has continued to speak of the courts with disrespect when they have not agreed with him.
He has continued to try to stoke fear in the American people of Muslims and of immigrants and continues to try to enforce travel restrictions against six majority Muslim countries. He has ignored the compassion of American people who want to sponsor refugees from Syria by banning Syrian immigration to the United States. He has done this while there is no evidence that Syrian refugees have perpetrated any terrorist attacks in the United States.
He has refused to show the public his tax returns, and he has refused to divest himself of his business interests which could be the source of conflicts-of-interests or violations of the emoluments clause of the United States Constitution.
He has appointed members to his cabinet who either have little knowledge of the agency they are tasked to oversee or who are hostile to the mission of the agency.
He has obstructed justice by firing the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to put an end to, or at least to retard, the Bureau’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
He has demeaned the prestige of the office of President of the United States with his inane tweets.
He has run the most fact free, lying campaign and presidency so far in modern American political history. The entire country is diminished when neither citizens nor the world can take what the president says seriously.
A president, whose character is thus marked, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Republican brothers and sisters. We have reminded them of their duty to the Constitution, to take proper care for the justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, the general welfare, including health care for all, and the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. We have appealed to their sense of responsibility to history and to their constituents. Many of them have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We will remember in November 2018.
We, therefore, The People of the United States of America, in the Name, and by the authority of citizenship solemnly publish and declare Resistance. We will write and call our local, state, and federal representatives and give them our opinions. We will not cooperate with unjust requests, such as a bogus commission on election fraud wanting personal information about voters. We will register and vote. We will encourage our friends, enemies, neighbors, coworkers and family to register and vote. We will resist any effort to suppress voting by people who have a legal right to do so. We will inform ourselves about the various pieces of legislation that come before Congress, especially those intended to encroach upon our privacy, harm the environment, sell off our national monuments to the oil and gas industry, or take away our health care coverage. We will not tolerate lies, and we will call them out when we hear them. We will insist that our elected officials who work for us and who are paid with our tax money are transparent, meet with constituents in person, and hold regular televised news conferences.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence and all that one considers transcendent and/or holy, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
 
 
 
 
Valerie Elverton Dixon is founder of JustPeaceTheory.com and author of “Just Peace Theory Book One: Spiritual Morality, Radical Love, and the Public Conversation.”

6 thoughts on “A Declaration of Resistance

  1. Dear Valerie,
    As the writer/editor and publisher of the Argentum Post, I highly commend you for this timely and important article.
    Every day and evert hour it becomes clear with an abundance of redundance that the White House occupant endangers our national security and damages our prestige globally.
    By peaceful, democratic means it is an imperative that he be removed from office along with Nikky Halley who in her total lack of diplomacy background, ignorance of history, is recklessly adding fuel to potential fires by engaging in hate and fear mongering coupled to hurling insults at the leaderships of the People’s Republic of China, of Russia, and others and uttering such drivel as ” (because) there is a new Sheriff in town…”
    More than ever the US needs to start talking and engaging constructively with Iran and Russia and not allow their detractors to get away with generating the falsehoods that Iran is a “terrorism” sponsoring country and that Russia is a “threat to our elections”. These falsehoods are not dissimilar from the ones found in smutty tabloids and they totally lack any solid documentation to back them up.
    North Korea is behaving the way it does because it has been the object of horrific mistreatment by the US which has dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea, not counting the 32,557 tons of napalm. This compares with 503,000 tons which the US dropped in the entire Pacific theater during WWII. These are statistics which were recently ( May 19, 2017) published by The Washington Post in an article by Anna Field titled ” The ‘Forgotten War’ Can Help Us Remember Why N. Korea Hates the US So Much”.
    For Trump’s bizarre pick of Nikki Haley at the UN to threaten war on N. Korea is insane. Even General Mattis stated that a war on N.Korea would lead to a catastrophe. Negotiating an Inspected freeze on the intercontinental ballistic missile system in exchange for a pledge of nonaggression would be the starter in negotiations which N. Korea which could evolve in the US and Russia joining the rest of the UN members in their talks to end eliminate ALL nuclear weapons starting the original “Club of 5” but also immediately bringing India, Pakistant, and Israel to the table.
    Thanks for your excellent “A Declaration of Resistance”

  2. Alfred:
    ‘”North Korea is behaving the way it does because it has been the object of horrific mistreatment by the US which has dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea, not counting the 32,557 tons of napalm. This compares with 503,000 tons which the US dropped in the entire Pacific theater during WWII. These are statistics which were recently ( May 19, 2017) published by The Washington Post in an article by Anna Field titled ” The ‘Forgotten War’ Can Help Us Remember Why N. Korea Hates the US So Much”.
    Oh my god! You really have to be kidding me. Have you ever picked up a book in your life. North Korea INVADED the south and the response was a UN action. I hate Trump as much as anyone else, buy using a clueless. argument does not held matters. NK is behaving the this way because they have a big baby trying to provoke another big baby.

    • I thought the mission was supposed to be a scholarly pursuit of college level debate instead of hysterical malignant Hyperbole. I would rather than rant… re-edit. This is preaching to the choir. Just some concept to reflex on. I am not sure what you mean by equality? To me it sounds like faso-marxism. I’m not a pea in a pod… and I’m sure you feel the same way.

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