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Old August 26th, 2008 #32
Alex Linder
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Don’t Tread on Me!

By Ron Ewart Monday, August 25, 2008



The Gadsden Flag, named after Christopher Gadsden, an American general and statesman, came to be a symbol of the thirteen original colonies and of American freedom and spirit.

Its origins are traced back to Benjamin Franklin from a hand carved replica he made of a snake cut into eight pieces that represented the 13 colonies, with the head being the New England colonies and the tail representing South Carolina. This hand carved image became one of the first political cartoons in history.

Paul Revere added the symbol as a snake, joined to fight a British Dragon, in an article in the “Massachusetts Spy”, one of the first newspapers in the new world.

In an essay published in the Pennsylvania Journal, Benjamin Franklin said:

“I recollected that her eye (speaking of the snake) excelled in brightness, that of any other animal, and that she has no eye-lids—She may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance.—She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage.”

Here are a few excerpts from the Declaration of Independence as our Founding Fathers sought redress from the oppressive hand of King George the third, of England. The parallels are uncanny, startling and downright disturbing.

# He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
# He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws;
# He has imposed Taxes on us without our Consent:
# He has taken away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
# In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
# We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

How many of these statements from the Declaration are directly applicable to our current situation under an oppressive United States Government? All of them!!! It appears that after 232 years and hundreds of thousands or millions of men and women who were maimed or gave their lives to defend our freedom, we successfully became independent from a foreign power, England, only to become helplessly dependent on our own government.

A country founded on the God-given, unalienable individual rights and self-reliance, has morphed into weak individuals, dependency and a complete willingness to be dominated by an ever-more-powerful government, because that government has brought a perpetual Christmas as an all-benevolent Santa Claus, handing out “free” gifts, largess and public welfare, taken by force at the point of a gun, from the sweat, blood and tears of the American producer. Government has become the purveyor of waste, fraud, abuse and corruption and destroys America’s free spirit along with its independence, creativity, ingenuity, industriousness and generosity. Almost everything that government touches ends up in chaos, or very expensive and dire unintended consequences.

It is time to bring back the symbol of American freedom and indomitable spirit, the Gadsden Flag, with the message to everyone in Government and those that support their policies of socialism, communism and radical environmentalism, “Don’t Tread On Me”, because I am a proud American and I will dedicate my life, my fortune and my sacred honor in the defense of freedom for me, my children and my grandchildren. As long as there is breath in my body, I shall not submit to government’s unconstitutional power and I will enlist a multitude of others in this most noble of all causes, the preservation, protection and defense of freedom and liberty for all.

We call out to those whose spirit and resolve are the very core of their being and represent the epitome of liberty. We call out to all Americans who believe strongly in righting a wrong and who have the courage and the will to return this great land to the destiny, out of providence, for which it was born; the extension of liberty for all peoples of the Earth, into the infinite future. For life without liberty is not life at all, but in fact is a living Hell in slavery.

What the colonists faced with the British, we now face with our own government. It took a bloody revolution to unlock the chains of English slavery. The question is, can we unlock the chains of American slavery with just words and civil deeds, or will once again freedom have to be regained by force and bloody violence? We urge that long before violence becomes the only alternative, rise up with us so that we may regain our freedom by the application of our own law, which provides us with a legal and lawful mechanism to hold government within its constitutional limits. Let us return our laws to common sense, constitutional principles and restore the goodness that lies in the hearts of all men, to our institutions of freedom, such that freedom is perpetual instead of accidental, or born out of misery, heartache, violence and revolution. Freedom is always in our grasp but we must at all times be ready and willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary to maintain it. Now is that time.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/4644