Reasonable Men

Bill Whittle—one of my favorite thinkers, writers, and PJTV personalities—has transcribed his latest Afterburner segment entitled "Reasonable Men."

I found myself especially drawn to a line drawn from a collaboration between Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, where Dickinson smoothed over the rhetoric of a too militant Jefferson.

"We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers or resistance by force. Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us."

The document this was drawn from was the July 6, 1775 Declaration of Taking Up Arms of the Second Continental Congress. It was a warning to England that the rights of men—not the newly-imagined "rights" of today's usurpers that involve the appropriation of the rights of others—are not forfeit to any government, but granted by our creator and not to be surrendered. This was not yet a call to revolution, but a clarification of intent.

It is worth noting that this declaration took place even after the battles at Lexington and Concord that left more than a hundred dead and hundreds wounded. At this late hour, they still strove for a peaceful accord.

Peace was always the goal... but not at the expense of liberty.