So, today I found myself wandering around the web. I was thinking about posting a historical description of the Boston Tea Party and changing the word Patriot to the word Terrorist just as an exercise in how we use language as a tool (sometimes detrimentally) to justify policies which would not be as agreeable otherwise.

While I was on my journey, I came across those documents which we talk a lot about in this country but, (at least in my case) rarely take the time out to read. I’m talking about the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. None of the documents (for me) are easily digestible without careful reading.

However, I found reading the Declaration of Independence particularly interesting in light of current events. There’s a passage of bulleted points of trespasses made by the King of England on the colonists. Considering our current foreign policy, these were the ones which struck me as truly ironic:

• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

• For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

• For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

• For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

• For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

• For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

• For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers...

Sound like any nation we know? Just something to bear in mind as we zealously prosecute the War on Terrorism.