When, the following year, the Continental Congress got around to declaring independence the following year, they listed twenty five grievances they accused King George III of, those being:
- Grievance 1 "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."
- Grievance 2 "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."
- Grievance 3 "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."
- Grievance 4 "He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, and also uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures."
- Grievance 5 "He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people."
- Grievance 6 "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 meantime, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and convulsions within."
- Grievance 7 "He has endeavored 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."
- Grievance 8 "He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers."
- Grievance 9 "He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries."
- Grievance 10 "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."
- Grievance 11 "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures."
- Grievance 12 "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power."
- Grievance 13 "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:"
- Grievance 14 "For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.
- Grievance 15 "For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:"
- Grievance 16 "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world".
- Grievance 17 "For imposing taxes on us without our consent:"
- Grievance 18 "For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Jury trial:
- Grievance 19 "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses:"
- Grievance 20 "For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries to render it at once an example and fit instrument
- Grievance 21 "For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:"
Perhaps nearly as distressing is a new development that I'm seeing in some Conservative quarters.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The founders of the Republic didn't want to keep a large standing Army, which they regarded, rightly, as a threat to democracy. The early land defense of the country, therefore, relied on state militias, which had the added ability to take on local problems without the necessity of a Federal army having to intervene. After all, keep in mind that one of the cited reasons for the Revolution is that the English had kept large bodies of armed troops in the colonies.
Standing armies are always a problem and the current era might very well be starting to demonstrate that. Throughout the nation's history it usually didn't have large armies save in times of war, or leading up to war. But since the onset of the Cold War it has. Even now, in the post Cold War era, the Army is enormous compared to what it had been before World War Two.
Anyhow, the Second Amendment doesn't exist so that average people can take on a tyrannical government. It exists so that states can take on the British, basically. That hasn't stopped at least three decades of firearms owners being schooled in the thought that they might have take up arms against the government, with those claims uniformly coming from the right, although in the 1960s, there were those on the left who argued with some justification that oppressed minorities should arm to protect themselves.
Now, all of a sudden, I'm seeing anti Trump Conservatives suggest that the Second Amendment's clauses have what I've already noted as a mistaken view. And some on the left are goading the far right on this very topic, ie., now that we have an authoritarian, they're quiet. That shows, I think, how far down the road of chaos we've gotten. We haven't seen anything like that since the Civil War.
Moreover, there's some discussion going on in the military right now over what the duties are of military officers if they are ordered to take an illegal action. To some extent I think you can argue they already have been, with the Trump administration declaring the public lands along the Mexican border to be military reservations, but that actually has a long history. At any rate, Angry Staff Officer, whose blog we link in here, has put up two items recently on the military duties to disobey illegal orders. The Space Force has had one commanding officer relieved for criticizing J. D. Vance's territorially aggressive statements, something I'm sure she knew would occur when she made them. While we'd have to see what would actually happen, I suspect there's a lot of back barracks discussions going on amongst officers about the point at which they refuse to obey an illegal order from Trump.
Trump is a disaster, bringing the worse instincts in people to the top, and excusing them. This will get worse, and worse, if the 25th Amendment doesn't come into play. The man is an stupid, ancient, narcissist who may very well be bordering on insane. If Congress acted now, and truth be known a near majority likely grasp it and are too chicken to do anything, the situation could be salvaged.
