NSIDE:  Our Declaration establishes that it is God Himself who defines right and wrong, and His standard is the standard we are measuring against. Not riots… but righteousness!

     There were angry mobs setting fires in the streets, looting the local businesses and beating up anyone in their way.  Many of our major cities were filled with chaos.  We remember it well – it was May of 2020 and much of the nation was reeling after George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, MN.  This article is not meant to be a discussion of the George Floyd case, but one part I remember well is watching a CNN news clip that was showing videos of rioters and looters, and the reporter, Don Lemon, said this is how our nation was started.  As scenes of the turmoil were displayed on the screen, he said,

“Our country was started because… The Boston Tea Party…  Rioting…  Do not get it twisted and think “Oh, this is something that has never happened before”,  This is how our country was started.” 

Reporter Don Lemon

     Was our nation started on riots?  Was the Declaration of Independence just the 18^th century version of breaking windows and stealing a case of the latest Adidas inventory at the local shoe store?  In this second installment of our 2026 sashay through the Declaration of Independence, we get a chance to look into that idea.   Spoiler alert – we will see in the text of this article, and continue to see as we go through the rest of the document – our Founders were principled men who considered facts, examined proper jurisdiction, contemplated duty to God and Country, and sought to make right decisions.  Let’s pick up where we left off in our last article and consider the next couple lines of the Declaration. 

     Last time we covered the intro at the top of the page.  Now we get into the text of the document: 

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”   

Our Founding Fathers, Declaration of Independence, 1776

     By the way, as I go through this document, I do not plan to say “they” worded things a certain way…  I will say that “we” worded them this way.  Let’s not forget one of the lessons we learned in the last article – these are UNANIMOUS truths.  This is our document – all of us – and WE made this great declaration, through the voice of our 1776 Representatives.  It has never been repealed or amended.  So, this is still the UNANIMOUS Declaration of the United States.  So, as we go through this great document, I will say “we” instead of “they”…  You can call it my “preferred pronouns” if it makes you feel better.  😊 

     I love the matter-of-fact way the document starts…  “When it becomes necessary…”  The way we started this document seems to say that as we have examined the turn of events, it appears this is one of those times that tends to come along from time to time where it became necessary to…  you know…  dissolve the political bands which connected us to the most powerful nation in the world at the time…  Even from this first line, we can tell this is FAR more calm and principled than that stuff on TV during the 2020 riots… 

What we are entitled to

     We announce here that we are ENTITLED to assume the place of a nation, separate and equal to the one from which we were born, and what ENTITLES us to that position is the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.  I have discussed the idea of the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God several times in other articles, so regrettably, I won’t cover the same ground again here.  If you have missed it, then these articles should get you started: 

• Laws of Nature and Nature’s God 
• What’s so Important about the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God? 
• The Declaration and the 10 Commandments 

     One thing I will say here is that the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God are BOTH from God.  He either wired them into His creation, wrote them into our hearts, or provided them to us in His Word, Or maybe a little bit of all that…  but it is all from Him!  So, this system of right and wrong that we are about to measure King George’s actions against – is all from God.  I wonder if any of the people committing crimes in the streets in 2020, or Mr. Lemon reporting on it, were ready to bounce their activities and words against the Laws of the very God of Heaven to make sure they were ENTITLED to do what they were doing…  I think not…  Yet, that’s exactly what we were doing with the Declaration. 

Respect

     We go on in the Declaration to say that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” requires that we give the reasons why we were doing what we were doing.  So, we had respect to – i.e. we cared – what the world thought of what we were doing.  Did any of the looters think they should display a DECENT RESPECT TO THE OPINIONS OF MANKIND and give thorough reasons for why they were doing what they were doing?  Again, no…  I think not…

     I really wanted to go through the document to cover this in the order it is written, but this is one place where I want to jump forward and share an amazing thing from later in the Declaration because it further drives home what we are saying here in this first paragraph.  Don’t worry – it is so good we will both want to cover it again when we get there. 

     If you fast forward to the last paragraph of the Declaration…  after all the facts about King George’s tyranny have been listed…  Look for the line that begins, “We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America…”  Look at what we say there…  “Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions…”  I want us all to understand that word “rectitude”.  Let’s look it up in the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary:

Rectitude –

In morality, rightness of principle or practice; uprightness of mind; exact conformity to truth, or to the rules prescribed for moral conduct, either by divine or human laws.  Rectitude of mind is the disposition to act in conformity to any known standard of right, truth or justice; rectitude of conduct is the actual conformity to such standard.  Perfect rectitude belongs only to the Supreme Being.  The more nearly the rectitude of men approaches to the standard of the divine law, the more exalted and dignified is their character.  Want of rectitude is not only sinful, but debasing.

     Wow… Our founders did this… and they hazarded their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to sign their names to this document so the world would know we were doing the right thing – before GOD!  Please don’t miss that.  With the Declaration, we sent out our reasons to THE WORLD, and literally appealed to God to prove the “rectitude” of what we were doing.  Ladies and Gentlemen, this is how you make a principled declaration – and it is FAR from throwing a brick through a store window. 

Riots… really??

     No, Mr. Lemon, I have to say you got that wrong.  Our nation was not started by your looting and rioting, and criminal behavior.  Our nation was started – and our UNANIMOUS DECLARATION clearly states that we were presenting our case to God Himself and looking for His judgement whether we were right.  Mr Lemon, are you, or the folks in your video prepared to do that?  I didn’t think so…  You should be ashamed to have likened the principled stand of our Founding Fathers with your rioting criminals – no sir, that is not how we started. 

God sets the standard

     Our Declaration establishes that it is God Himself who defines right and wrong, and His standard is the standard we are measuring against.  We were pretty sure we were doing right, but we listed out all the facts and then appealed to God Himself for a final decision.  Wow, that is principle.  That is faith. 

That is the beginning of our great and Godly nation.