All Americans are happy this weekend, as we prepare to celebrate the 225th anniversary of our declaration of Independence from the Brits, the same people who colonized you!
(And to my British cousins, I would like to say that we are all so happy that we have been friends and allies these many years!! God Bless You -- and I also think that Kate and Pippi are really smashing !!)
This weekend I am thinking not just about July 4th, but also July 9th.
What do these two days have in common?
They are both about the rights that all people have.
Those rights come from God, not from governments. They do not come from a President or a Prime Minister. And they certainly do not come from whoever the power-inflated, pompous, self-important IGP happens to be this year.
It is not up to a government to tell us what we can think or write.
It is not up to an IGP to tell us whether we can assemble peaceably in common cause.
The American Declaration of Independence, proclaimed on July 4, 1776, 225 years ago, said:
"All experience hath shown 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.
"Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states."
Put into modern English,
"There comes a point when-
"We have had it.
"Maybe we were willing to suffer and be patient -- that is the way most of us are in the face of power -
"But that's it! No more! Enough is enough!
"We have had it with those who act like tyrants.
"We have had it with those people who think we work for them, and think we will do whatever they say --
"Who think we will suffer silently.
"So now we have decided --
"It's time for change.
"We are going to stand up for ourselves
"and for our freedom
''and for our rights.
"which God has given to us."
Happy 4th of July.
And Happy 9th of July to my Malaysian friends.
- John Malott is the former US ambassador to Malaysia and still maintains an avid interest in the region
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