This might be a great time for Nevada to declare its own independence.
In looking over the Declaration of Independence, which is a good thing to do on July 4 while waiting for the hot dogs to burn, it appears we have a few King George wannabes sitting in our nation's capital today.
In declaring their independence 224 years ago, representatives from the 13 states listed a host of gripes they had against King George III.
For example:
- He forbade governors to pass laws (thank goodness the feds leave us alone today, eh?).
- He forced legislative bodies to meet in distant places, hoping to wear them out (and there's a problem with that?).
- He obstructed the administration of justice (now doesn't that sound familiar?).
- He influenced judges (now doesn't that really sound familiar?)
- He plundered our seas and ravaged our coasts (kind of like the TRPA).
- He "excited" domestic insurrections among us and endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions (Clinton never did that, but he has "excited" once or twice in an undistinguished fashion).
The authors of this great document for freedom went on to indicate that they really didn't want a beef with King George, but that he left them no choice but to kick his prissy fanny back to the land of fish and chips.
"We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend unwarranted jurisdiction over us (Jarbidge and the Shovel Brigade? Yucca Mountain? Gambling?)," wrote the revolutionaries. "They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity (being of the same blood)."
I don't think the signers of the Declaration quite imagined that the federal government's choke hold on those 13 original and subsequent states would be stronger than anything the Third in a line of King Georges could manage from the other side of the Atlantic.
States' rights have been the cause of bitter controversy at several periods in U.S. history. Before the Civil War, for example, supporters of states' rights believed that the federal government was only a "voluntary compact" of the states and that states could legally refuse to carry out federal enactments that they regarded as unconstitutional encroachments on their sovereignty. Man, were they ever naive.
Let's take sports betting, for example. There is a movement afoot in Washington, D.C. to ban betting on college ball games. Never mind that it is legal in Nevada. Never mind that it is regulated in Nevada. Never mind that it contributes significant revenues for Nevadans. Some lawmakers from Arizona, Kansas and beyond think gambling is evil. More evil than...say... accepting campaign money in white envelopes from special interests. Or more evil than doing special favors for those special interest groups who gave you money to stay in office long enough to tell the rest of us what's evil. Even more evil than taking a cigar and...well...even more evil than that.
Then again, it's coming from the same place that determined it's evil for students to pray in school, but O.K. to have an abortion.
I don't think those are the kinds of decisions John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams and the rest of the Fathers of Independence envisioned a "federal government" making 224 years ago. Those were the kinds of decisions, rather, that King George III might make today. The kind of decisions that got his prissy fanny kicked back to England where they drive on the wrong side of the road and don't even know it.
Those Founding Fathers aren't around to ask, but their eloquent words are clear in that document we celebrate today. "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or 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."
"Prudence," they wrote, "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."
Think about that as you enjoy your barbecue today.
Happy Independence Day.
