ENGLAND WINS! HAPPY FOURTH

Rumpole has quietly decamped to the Basil Street Hotel in Knightsbridge, London, where we have escaped the Miami heat, and rooted for the lads, who emerged victorious Tuesday, in a shootout over Colombia. The game was especially exciting, with the Colombian team tying the game in literally the last seconds on a corner kick and beautiful header. Two over-time periods later, the score was still 1-1 and England faced the dreaded shootout, in which the national team has suffered heartbreak in 1990, 1996, and 2006. But Tuesday was different and The Three Lions roared and England emerged victorious. We raised several glasses of stout and sang Rule Britannia and God Save The Queen, and reveled in the victory, even as our fellow revelers in the pub gave little thought to the upcoming anniversary of the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1776. 

Fifty years to the day after they signed the Declaration of Independence, Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the last surviving Founding Fathers, passed away on July 4, 1826. When Adams died, he was reported to have said about his old friend, and then rival for the presidency "And Jefferson Lives". Adams did not know that a few hours earlier Jefferson had passed away as well. 

While the pedestrian blogger would be tempted to quote "we hold these truths to be self evident..." we are far from pedestrian. 
Instead, as the times dictate, we publish the portion of text that talks about when it is the right and duty of citizens to rise up and abolish governments that "becomes destructive". (Hmmmmm, what governments  have recently become destructive by separating children from their families, and glorifying ignorance over science by denying global warming?)

Words from a time well gone that have special relevance today. 

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, 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.

From Free England, from whence the colonies once broke free, and where now the English once again, along with the French and Germans (but not America), light the darkness of oppression with the principles of freedom and humanity, fight the power!