Re-Declaration of Independence

What the text might read like if drafted today, 249 years after its signing

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to rebuild the political ties that have connected them, respect for global opinion leads us to declare why we are taking this action.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

To secure these universal rights we form governments, which thus derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is our right to alter or to abolish it, and to start a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form that to us seem most likely to support our safety and wellbeing.

Prudence dictates that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and accordingly all experience has shown that people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and power-grabs reveals a design to reduce us under absolute despotism, it is our right and duty to throw off such government and to provide new safeguards for our security.

Our forebears founded this Republic on the incompatible principles of universal human rights and capitalism. The culture of power, property and prestige overwhelmed a culture of respecting the dignity and worth of the human person. The discord arising from this uneven conflict of values has led to the suffering of the American people for nearly two and a half centuries, and is now the chief cause that pushes us to renew our systems of government.

The actions of the current and many past presidents of these United States is a history of repeated injuries to the popular will and violations of the Constitution, trending from genocide to self-righteous empire building. Our governments over the past lifetime or so, regardless of party affiliation, have moved toward the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Various presidents have asserted their right to make war, thus assuming a power constitutionally invested in the legislative branch of government.

Since America helped establish the United Nations in 1945, every one of our elected national governments has violated both the spirit and the letter of its Charter, especially regarding this pair of clauses in Article 2:

• 3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and. justice, are not endangered.

• 4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

In 1964 President Lyndon Baines Johnson lied about an engagement between North Vietnamese patrol boats and a US destroyer and fighter jets in the Gulf of Tonkin, saying ‘we do not seek a wider war...’, yet a year later we had 200,000 American troops in South Vietnam.

LBJ in turn was appalled by what he perceived as treason in 1968 when Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon stymied peace talks by promising the South Vietnam regime a better deal under his administration.

Democratic populist tokenism began in earnest under President Jimmy Carter in 1977. He appointed a Black woman as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and a Black civil rights veteran as ambassador to the UN, but continued serving Wall Street and the establishment in every practical way, from increasing defense spending to protecting the profits of the United Fruit Company in Latin America and those of big oil everywhere.

Ronald Reagan used his telegenic good humor to attack welfare recipients for being lazy, while breaking the law to train and fund death squads from Central America to Afghanistan.

George Bush I drummed a coalition of the willing into war to keep Middle East oilfields safe for democracy, and his successor, Bill Clinton, moved US manufacturing to Mexico and China and elsewhere, bombed Yugoslavia, Somalia and other countries, and led the repeal of the Glass Steagall provisions of 1933 that had forbidden the combination of investment and commercial banking. Now a quarter century later banks and finance companies brazenly charge Americans up to 30% per year on credit card debt.

George Bush 2 launched a war in Iraq on false allegations regarding weapons of mass destruction, and had lawyers produce twisted legal arguments allowing torture of prisoners and mass surveillance of everyone.

Barack Obama as presidential candidate during the mortgage-backed securities collapse of 2008 sided with the bankers and opted for bailouts for the rich and foreclosures for the poor. As president he hounded whistleblowers, attacked the media to catch suspected leakers, and asserted the right to execute suspected terrorists by fiat, whether they be American citizens or not.

The increasing disconnect between the public will and government policy continued; the people favor universal health care, but Obama could only make it mandatory for all employed citizens to buy private healthcare insurance.

Donald Trump serves the interests of rich people, and in 2017 passed a huge tax cut for corporations and the rich, but was hindered in much else of his official agenda by a political and legal smear campaign accusing him of being in league with the Russian government. Trump proved himself no fiscal conservative as he also increased the federal deficit by approximately $8 trillion in his first term.

Joe Biden demanded a strategic defeat of nuclear superpower Russia and risked World War III under fraudulent and dishonest pretenses, using the hapless Ukrainian fascists as patsies. Under the pretext of supporting Israel he pushed billions in bombs and money to help the Zionist regime commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, and at the behest of the Israeli lobby throttled student protests against the genocide at university campuses in the US.

Biden’s mental deterioration in office led to his mid-campaign removal from the Democratic ticket and to Trump’s election to a second term. Trump started his second term by advocating the right to free speech and dismantling Biden’s institutionalized censorship network of various government agencies linked with private and academic organizations.

However, Trump almost immediately began sending plainclothes federal agents to abduct foreign students for allegedly supporting terrorism, when they had merely been exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech by protesting US sponsorship of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Federal agents also sent prominent arrested student protestors from universities in New York and Boston to a federal detention center in Louisiana, distant from their family, friends and lawyers.

In addition, Trump directed federal agents to arrest immigrants on charges of being Venezuelan gang members, and sent them without due process to a prison in El Salvador financed by the US government. The government also evaded and resisted injunctions by various federal judges to stop and desist.

The Supreme Court on April 7, 2025 approved in a 5-4 unsigned ruling the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as the legal foundation for these abductions and deportations.

Let us recall several of the charges levied against King George III in the original Declaration of Independence:

• 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:

• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

We, therefore, the people of the United States of America, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the moral rightness of our intentions, do solemnly publish and declare that these United States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the federal government until such time as our rights are restored to our satisfaction.

For the support of this Re-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.