We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
-- U.S. Declaration of Independence
I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet through all the gloom I see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth all the means. This is our day of deliverance.
-- John Adams
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
-- Thomas Jefferson
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"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind 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 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."
This is the beating heart of our declaration of Independence. Not just a statement made by Americans for Americans; but rather a statement made by Americans for people everywhere and for all time.
Many populations across the greater Middle East (and around the globe) have for a range of reasons suffered "while evils are sufferable," but now, to the great chagrin of those governments overly dedicated to sustaining this insufferable status quo, these populations are exercising this fundamental right, and performing this sacred duty.
It is disconcerting. It is violent. It is uncertain. It is the very worst way and last resort for achieving governmental reform. But it is democracy in its rawest form. The final argument of the people when legal arguments are suppressed, denied or ignored. Insurgency does not of necessity bring good governance (and then usually only after generations of messy trial and error), but it is almost always in response to governance that is bad.
On this day of American independence, let us not be so worried about how the desire for independence by others might impact us, that we act too quickly to simply assist and enable the governments they rise up against to sustain for some period of time that which is not, and should not, be sustainable.
De Oppresso Liber