Jim Verdi: Conservative Grievances Are So 1776

I know in today’s parlance it is not de rigueur to talk kindly about Thomas Jefferson. Even the institutions he founded, like the University of Virginia, are trying to excise any acknowledgement of his existence by the mindless inhabitants of the student body, encouraged by their willing indoctrinators on the faculty. However, I still see him as one of the geniuses of our founding and the most eloquent writer of the period. While imperfect in his actions, he concisely laid out a proposal for a new form of governance, in which the citizens of a nation should be responsible for their own destinies.

Jefferson and his contemporaries were influenced by the great minds of the Enlightenment, particularly Isaac Newton, Montesquieu, and John Locke, the latter of whom penned the consequential work entitled “Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” which posited that man was able to effectively govern himself. This was quite a radical notion at a time when monarchies and feudal constructs were still the overwhelming form of government. 

Our founders used these ideas to formulate an argument for their separation from the British Empire and what they saw as King George III’s tyrannical rule. The result was our Declaration of Independence, which not only argued for our separation, but began to put into practice the notion that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” borrowing from Locke’s political philosophy of that any government should be done by the consent of the governed to protect the natural rights of all men, life, liberty and estate.

Although Jefferson wrote the Declaration stating that “all men are created equal” while at the same time holding to the institution of enslaved individuals as clearly our original sin (although Jefferson did address it in his original writing, only to be struck down by the southern delegates), he also laid out a case as to why separation was not only inevitable but necessary. Although some are outdated due to changes we’ve had as a nation in these nearly 250 years, Many of these grievances sound very similar to what is happening in the country today. Let’s examine them:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

Joe Biden’s use of executive orders have been specifically designed, from the first day of his administration, to restrict activity of citizens and their businesses. While executive orders were used in the Trump administration to reduce the grip of a regulatory government over our economic activity, our property and our lives, which resulted in an economic boom, King Biden reversed many of those, reimposing restrictions on land use, energy production, and imposing ridiculous diversity and equity regulations on businesses and institutions, including our military, thereby weakening their ability to perform at their optimum levels. He is also pursuing relentlessly, with his fellow Democrats and weak Republican useful idiots, the disarming of American citizens, a clear violation of the 2nd amendment.

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.

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.

Here’s a twofer! The Biden administration’s criminal lack of border security has caused an invasion of illegal migrant crossings from all over the world in record numbers, without regard to the child trafficking and drug smuggling that is leading to more violent crime, and the alarming rise in fentanyl deaths plaguing the country. When border governors, like Greg Abbott threaten to use the Texas guard or build a wall themselves, Biden sics his “Justice” dept. on them, threatening lawsuits. 

Meanwhile, he’s flying and sending these migrants using the CBP into all areas of the US, never to be heard from again. Yes, they’re given orders to appear, but those dates are for years down the road in many cases, and they’re given with a wink and a nod that they will never be held accountable for not appearing. 

While the ‘raising conditions of new Appropriations of Lands’ applied to new boundaries in the mid to late 1700’s, we now have federal control of large swaths of land in the country, in which the federal government determines what can and cannot be done on them. This administration has, for all intents and purposes, ended domestic energy production, while allowing China and individuals such as Bill Gates to buy up large amounts of US farm land.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

This was a doozy. This was the grievance that basically launched a revolution as Parliament enacted laws that regulated the affairs of the colonies and appointed governors to enforce those. The Stamp Act was one of these laws and is arguably the fuse that set off the revolution. We see this today in the form of climate czars, energy czars and even misinformation czars, among others. If you want to be part of the state, or receive any benefit from the state, you better bend the knee. Merrick Garland, Dr. Fauci, John Kerry, Scary Poppins are all the people telling you what you will do in order to live and work in the United States.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

To enforce the Intolerable Acts, King George appointed General Gates to use the military to keep the colonists in Massachusetts in line. While King Joe has not used the military proper to keep citizens in line, he has used the FBI, IRS, and DOJ to enforce his will. We saw the overreach recently of the FBI in the raid of President Trump’s home, but we know they’ve done much more, most notably spying on Trump’s campaign and his early first term before they were caught. He’s used the DOJ to spy on parents at school board meetings and to classify them as domestic terrorists. As far as the military, they’ve become more a social experiment than a fighting force that is able to defend us against threats from other nations.

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent

This one is most obvious of all, with the Inflation “Production” Act, the student loan debt “forgiveness,” and inflation bringing a multitude of new taxes on Americans. The student loan debt itself was done without approval of congress, which is clearly against the law.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury​​​​​​​

The one thing the media refuses to talk about is the current gulag in Washington DC, keeping grandmothers and others in solitary for trespassing on Capitol grounds on January 6th. Their willing friends in the media keep calling it an “armed insurrection” without providing evidence of any arms or insurrection.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers…whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.​​​​​​​

While this refers to King George using Native Americans to exact an brutal violent toll on the colonists, it applies now to what is going on in our cities. While claiming that conservatives are Nazis and White Supremacists, even putting them at number one on the terror threat level, they unleash criminals from jail using radical leftist DA’s, defunding the police, and siccing Antifa on our towns, to burn and loot at will, without any threat of jail time. They allow gangs of thieves to steal from businesses in broad daylight, people who commit violent assaults to not even be detained in jail overnight and convicted felons to roam free. This is encouraged by politicians like Maxine Waters and others in the media who are happy to parrot the party line. 

They also work in cahoots with the Big Tech monopolies to censor speech, squash actual news, and disseminate lies to a lazy public who are more interested in what is happening with the Kardashians than with the ruling bodies that are making decisions for their lives. 

These are but a few of the grievances that apply to our current situation. The frustration of the founders was summed up by Jefferson thusly:

We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. ​​​​​​​

First of all, the use of the word consanguinity is not only beautiful, but evidence of our loss of how wonderful the English language is. Secondly, they at least had great patriots like Thomas Paine who would get the message out about the current tyranny they were experiencing. We do not have that today. We have a state compliant media, academic institutions that reinforce bad policy, and an elite class of politicians that no longer listen to us. 

What we do have, that they didn’t, is a Constitution that gives us a structure to overcome these indignities. This is what we should use to advance our cause. Edward Bulwer-Lytton said, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” It is time to use our words to wage this war against this tyrannical dictatorship. Let no one shut you up. To sum up and echo what the founders wanted to do to claim their independence:

And for the support of this 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.​​​​​​​

If we do this, we can live up to Lincoln’s words, which succinctly and eloquently summed up the meaning of what the Declaration gave us:

“that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”​​​​​​​

Jim Verdi is the Senior Producer for the Dan Bongino Show