I can’t remember if I’ve mused about this here before, but there’s a thought experiment I keep coming back to when I hear about what Fallen Times we live in. And, trust me, I understand the complaint. The Bad News is relentless. But the news and social media is looking at the world through a fun house mirror. How bad is the reality in comparison to other times? So, the thought experiment is to wonder which previous decade I’d rather live in. For the sake of the argument, I assume that I wouldn’t be living in that time as a heterosexual white man. (The reason for that assumption is to avoid mistaking “better times” for “times that seem better because of the fruits of oppression or discrimination.”)

My conclusion is that things today aren’t much worse than they’ve ever been and, in a lot of respects, are better than they’ve been historically. It doesn’t mean that we can’t aspire to something better, but nostalgia is a helluva drug & the Bad News might have us more depressed than the circumstances really justify.

Just riffing on Sheila Kennedy’s blog post about that WSJ column that criticized Dr. Jill Biden’s use of the title “Dr.” I didn’t read the column – because when’s the last time I found something useful in the Wall Street Journal opinion pages? but I heard about it because my wife definitely recognized the sexism at the root of the column. (Short version – as I understand it – she shouldn’t go by “doctor” because she holds a Ph.D. instead of an MD. Which is nonsense.)

Anyway, it made me think of a more or less conscious decision I made at some point to go by “Doug” in my professional career as often as I can. There are some pretentious gasbags in the legal profession (but not as many as you might think), and I didn’t want to be lumped in with them. Mr. Douglas J. Masson, Esq., JD or whatever, just isn’t my style. And, I kind of roll my eyes when someone has an email signature with a bunch of letters indicating certifications and credentials appended to the end. I’m glad you have expertise that will inform your work, but I’m going to have to see the expertise in action. The credentials themselves are not going to impress me. I’ve never been one to be awed by people with a lot of education or to conclude someone isn’t smart for lack of an education. (The “aww shucks” farmers will often fleece you faster than the guy with the MBA.)

That said, over the years I’ve become more aware that my ability to pull off the “just Doug” thing as a professional is something that, to a certain extent, comes from a place of privilege. Almost everything about me conforms to traditional notions of what it means to be a professional: I’m an upper middle-class educated white male with a neutral accent and (pre-COVID) often dressed in a coat and tie. I can be slightly transgressive by using my first name with no credentials because that’s not going to stop anyone from taking me seriously. (And, I guess for the few who will treat me dismissively on account of not putting on airs, I’m happy enough that they won’t see me coming.)   When I was a college student, I was a work-study employee in one of the departments, and there was a professor who — at the time — struck me as being a little more insistent than everyone else about making sure everyone called her by her title. I generally went out of my way to call everyone Mr., Mrs., Dr., Professor, or whatever was appropriate just as a matter of course. But seeing her correct others on a few occasions was, nevertheless, a little off-putting. What I had no appreciation of at the time was the context in which she was doing this. I’m sure she had to fight a little harder for respect than the men in her field.

I don’t have a huge point to make here. Just noting a bit of the cultural context in which the discussion of titles is taking place.

In honor of Indiana’s 204th birthday, I’m just going to re-post my bicentennial entry which, if I do say so myself, was pretty good:

The bicentennial is finally upon us. 200 years ago today — on December 11, 1816 — President Madison signed the Congressional resolution admitting Indiana into Union as a state.

So we come now to the end of our story. It was a tale that, as they say, grew in the telling. When I started writing, I had a vague notion of a couple of posts each month devoted to the bicentennial. By the end, the project had consumed my blog activity and resulted in 12 to 13 posts per month. We are going to end just shy of 115,000 words. In this, I suppose, it’s a metaphor for Indiana which started as a small affair, huddled in a crescent from the Whitewater, across the Ohio, and back up the lower Wabash but has grown to a population of about 6.6 million people. Additionally, when I wrote about the national background, it was originally conceived as a few paragraphs to give some flavor of what was going on in the rest of the country. It progressively came to dominate more and more of the entries. I think this is reflective of how transportation and communication came to tie Indiana (as it did with the rest of the states) to the country as a whole. For the first half of our history, the barriers to communication and travel contributed to our state having a unique identity. As those barriers eroded, so too, has the uniqueness of our identity has eroded.

In the beginning, there was William Henry Harrison, Jonathan Jennings, Native Americans, and the slavery question. Native Americans, slavery, and Harrison were pushed out. Jennings spent some time on top but ended his days in an unmarked grave. Nevertheless, the state was on its way. The first order of business was to claw its way out of the wilderness. Hoosiers pushed out the natives and focused on internal improvements. The Indiana Mammoth Internal Improvement Act was a seminal event in our history. It laid the skeleton for our transportation system and plunged us into bankruptcy.

With the Constitution of 1816, our educational system was more aspirational than real. But, before long, educational reformers like Caleb Mills prompted changes that led to the Constitution of 1851 and our public school law. Of course, the Constitution of 1851 had its dark side as well — notably the infamous Article 13 and the exclusion of “negroes and mulattoes” from the state. During this period, the dyspeptic Jesse Bright rose to power, dominating the Democrats and the state political structure. As Indiana was drawn into the sectional conflict over slavery, Indiana’s Democratic Party fractured. Republicans rose out of the ashes of the Whigs, Democrats became the Party of the South, and Bright was eventually tossed out of the U.S. Senate for introducing Confederate President Jefferson Davis to an arms dealer.

The question of slavery dominated the country’s politics for a decade, and it seemed like everything was on hold until the Civil War finally burst the bubble. In Indiana, as elsewhere in the North, the federal Fugitive Slave Act (enthusiastically embraced by “states rights Southerners”) caused consternation and some dramatic incidents as slavers attempted to abduct black people in the north so Southerners could steal their labor.

In the dramatic election of 1860, Henry Bright led the Republican ticket in Indiana as the gubernatorial candidate, then immediately turned the governor’s office over to his lieutenant in exchange for the U.S. Senate seat. As governor, Oliver Morton faced abolitionist Quakers like George Julian on his left and, more numerously, Copperhead southern sympathizers on his right. Through force of will and, occasionally questionable methods, Morton kept Indiana fighting for the Union.

After the Civil War, Indiana hit its stride. Over a period of 50 years or so, its politicians would become politically relevant. Its authors would become world renowned. Indiana would supply four Vice-Presidents and one President. Schuyler Colfax served with President Grant from 1869 through 1873, Thomas Hendricks would serve with President Cleveland in 1885, Charles Fairbanks with Theodore Roosevelt from 1905 to 1909, and Thomas Marshall with Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1921. And, of course, Benjamin Harrison was the President from 1889 to 1893. Indiana was a swing state during those years with Republicans and Democrats fairly evenly matched. Having a Hoosier candidate on the ticket helped the odds. William English and John Kern were on the losing ticket in 1880 and 1908, respectively. Thomas Marshall, always good with a quote, quipped that Indiana was the “mother of vice presidents,” because it is “home of more second-class men than any other state.”

The development of industry in Indiana was powered by a gas boom from the 1880s through the early 20th century. Rapid growth and industrialization took place in Indiana’s gas belt in eastern Indiana. Cities like Muncie, Kokomo, Anderson, and Marion competed to attract new industries with offers of free natural gas, land, railway sidings, and tax credits.

Lured by the generous incentives, 162 factories were built, creating over 10,000 jobs by 1890. Among these new industries were tinplate mills in Anderson, Gas City, and Elwood as well as 21 new glass factories. “Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing” relocated to Muncie from Buffalo, N.Y.

About the same time, the state experienced the Golden Age of Indiana literature. Probably the most commercially successful was Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ, published in 1880. It has been called “the most influential Christian book of the 19th century” and outsold “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It was an action adventure of sorts that was popular even if it received mixed reviews from critics. The works of Edward Eggleston and James Whitcomb Riley depicted nostalgic views of early Indiana. Eggleston at least, was motivated by a desire to be regarded as an equal of the New Englanders. Celebrating what Indiana had to offer, he wrote:

It used to be a matter of no little jealousy with us, I remember, that the manners, customs, thoughts, and feelings of New England country people filled so large a place in books, while our life, not less interesting, not less romantic, and certainly not less filled with humorous and grotesque material, had no place in literature. It was as though we were shut out of good society.

Booth Tarkington was somewhat later, mostly the first two decades of the twentieth century, but he wrote a number of well-received novels, including The Gentleman from Indiana, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Alice Adams. His novels detailed the changes experienced by middle and upper-class Hoosiers in the face of dramatic changes in society, hopeful but fearful the urban and industrial would threaten traditional Hoosier values of stability and individualism.

By the time of its centennial in 1916, Indiana was understandably proud of its accomplishments. In many ways, the ambitions of those first Hoosiers had been realized. Indiana had carved its way out of the wilderness and risen to prominence as an important part of what was becoming the most powerful nation on the planet. The centennial observations were extensive. Among other things, Governor Ralston founded the state park system to “stand forever as a token of the past,” and “bring health, wealth and happiness” to future generations.

But, the dislocation and transition that Tarkington wrote about left its mark on Indiana after the upheavals of the Progressive Era and World War I. Post-war Indiana saw the rapid rise of the Klan. The Industrial Revolution has been disruptive, and the switch to a more urban and less rural way of life was disconcerting. After World War I, the nation was looking for, as President Harding put it, a return to “normalcy.” D.C. Stephenson was a huckster who was particularly successful in selling the Klan’s essentially negative views of Christianity and American and Hoosier exceptionalism. This message was pretty easily used in an “us” versus “them” kind of way. And the Klan always likes to punch down against less privileged members of society. In 1920s Indiana, the group tended to promote a negative vision of Patriotism and Protestantism, “defending” them against Roman Catholics, the foreign born, Jews, blacks, and the old White Cap enemies: the immoral such as adulterers, gamblers, and drinkers. The Catholics, in particular, seemed to cause anxiety in the sorts of folks who joined the Klan in 1920s Indiana. The Klan’s vision had resonance. About 1/3 of white, male Hoosiers joined up. They successfully put Ed Jackson in the Governor’s office. But D.C. Stephenson whose rise from “a nobody from nowhere” to “the law in Indiana” was rapid had an equally rapid fall from grace. The media coverage of his trial for the murder of of Madge Oberholtzer shocked the state. And, when a pardon was not forthcoming from Governor Jackson, Stephenson decided that he was not going down alone and mostly took the rest of the Klan down with him by talking to the Indianapolis Times.

It was not long after the peak of the Klan that the Great Depression gave Hoosiers and everyone else real problems. The dire economic situation prompted the electorate to sweep Republicans out of office and elect Democrats in overwhelming numbers. For Indiana, this meant that Paul McNutt had almost unprecedented political power for a short period of time. He used it to reshape Indiana government. When he took office in 1933, McNutt hit the ground running. Historian James Madison says, “no governor since Oliver P. Morton held such power or so forcefully directed state government and his party.” McNutt believed that government could be a great instrument of human progress. First on the agenda was relief for the unemployed. The local organizations and government were not up to the task. McNutt extended and centralized the existing relief efforts and worked in conjunction with FDR’s federal government to provide more. This led to the Indiana Department of Public Welfare and the creation of a state old age pension. Another initiative of the McNutt administration was the Office of the Consumer Advocate — initially led by future Supreme Court Justice Sherman Minton. Home rule and state’s rights were infringed upon in favor of a powerful state government working hand-in-hand with the federal government.

McNutt also created the Indiana State Police. He was successful in implementing tax reform where prior governors had failed. McNutt advocated and the legislature passed a state gross sales tax — in effect a combination sales and income tax. He overhauled the state bureaucracy, making it more rational but also using the changes to enhance his patronage power. State employees were “encouraged” to show their support by joining the Hoosier Democratic Club — commonly known as the “Two Percent Club,” because that percent of their pay was assessed as the price of membership. Theoretically membership was voluntary, but it was generally assumed that a state job was not secure if one did not belong. Republicans vehemently denounced the Two Percent Club but somehow changed their mind about its merits when they returned to power in the 1940s.

Indiana, like the rest of the country, weathered the Depression and then was consumed by World War II. The state became a center of production with activity that transformed the state. Approximately 363,000 Hoosiers served in the war and 10,000 died in service. Indiana produced $3.2 billion worth of war supplies and constructed factories valued at about a billion dollars. Between 1940 and 1950, Indiana’s population increased by 500,000. Following the war, Indiana would take imperfect and often contentious steps toward desegregation. We saw a microcosm of this in the efforts in Marion County to desegregate schools and the history of Shortridge High School. Also following the wars, the nation really improved its highways. Improvements in transportation and highways intertwined us more closely with the rest of the nation and, for good or bad, I feel like this cost us some of our distinctive character. Milan had its miracle in 1954, but since then we’ve traded our one-class basketball tournament and joined the rest of the country in observing Daylight Saving Time.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, and Watergate made for stormy politics. The state implemented some fairly substantial constitutional changes in the early 1970s. This led to, among other things, a return to two term governors in 1972 after a long period of governors being limited to one term since the Constitution of 1851 was adopted. Taxes had been a particularly troublesome issue in the 60s. Governor Bowen, in the 70s implemented a shift away from property taxes toward sales taxes to address the problem. Governor Daniels would take a similar approach in the early 21st century when similar issues arose.

Since the 1970s, our political leadership has been fairly stable. After a major corruption scandal in the Indiana Senate in the late 70s, Bob Garton took control of the chamber and led it for a quarter century. Governors Bowen, Orr, Bayh, O’Bannon, and Daniels each won two terms. Mike Pence is the first elected governor, eligible for re-election, not to enjoy a second term since Samuel Bigger in 1843. But, he’s going to follow in the footsteps of Dan Quayle and be the Vice-President, so I suppose he won’t complain.

And now we’re at the bicentennial. Through a good chunk of this history, I’m proud to say there were Massons involved. My great, great grandfather, James P. Masson moved to Indianapolis sometime around 1850 or 1860. My great grandfather, M. Ross Masson was born shortly thereafter. His son (my grandfather) James E. Masson was born in 1905. My father, also named James, was born in 1939. They were all from Indianapolis. I was born in Richmond in 1971. And my kids, the 6th generation, were born in Lafayette.

It is my hope that, in our third century, Hoosiers can redirect their attention locally and regain the energy and ambition that drove the first generations to carve a great state out of the wilderness. To do so, I think we have to reconnect with our neighbors, devote our attention to local government and community events, and make our cities and towns places our children are eager and proud to call home. Greatness is not beyond reach. Golden Age Athens did work that still shapes the world today despite having a population of only about 300,000. England, a relatively small backwater island nation at the beginning of the 17th century went on to rule a large part of the world by the end of the 18th century, coming to regard the Romans as little men with small dreams.

We need to educate our children, improve our infrastructure, cultivate the science, literature, arts, and productive economic activity. We should not be passive observers, complaining about the present or dwelling on nostalgia for the past. We need to actively create our future. If we do so, perhaps our tricentennial will mark a new high water mark for the Hoosier State.

I had a post from 12 years ago where I commented:

Sheila has a good post on “The Appeal of Fascism” that you should go read. It’s no secret that Trump has authoritarian tendencies and that it’s not a small number of his supporters regard this as a feature rather than a bug. So, what the hell is going on? It’s too easy to dismiss Trumpists (not that Sheila is doing this) as goose-stepping Nazi wannabes. Sure, there are some out there. Charlottesville showed us that. But if that’s the answer, we might as well just pack up the American experiment and get ready to start shooting at each other. If nearly half of your fellow countrymen are simply monsters, then you’re just biding time until the Apocalypse.

So, I don’t think most Trump supporters are monsters. But I’m also tired of trying to understand them. As Sheila observes:

Pious exhortations to more progressive Americans to “reach out” to those resisting social change aren’t just embarrassingly one-sided (no one is telling the alt-right to try to understand those dark-skinned or Jewish or Muslim “libruls”); they also have a distressing tendency to be either naive or condescending– or both.

There’s no shortage of Trump supporters who dismiss liberals as un-American. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but I don’t see a lot of energy being spent by Trump supporters or really anyone else trying to understand Clinton or Biden supporters. Endless New York Times safaris to talk to white people in the diners of the great Flyover were not balanced by right-wing publications talking to black people in the city trying to understand why they didn’t like Trump.

I don’t know what “the answer” is in terms of trying to get the division to be less pervasive and less vitriolic. But I suspect it has something to do with having people from opposite sides of the divide interact more frequently in ways that don’t involve discussing their differences. I suppose having people steer clear of unhappy discussions is a very Midwestern approach, but I just don’t see any upside in trying to resolve these kinds of differences. You can’t reason someone out of a position he didn’t reason himself into. These cultural biases we have internalized which divide us from fellow citizens who have internalized other cultural biases aren’t, by and large, views that we’ve come to objectively. Some of them may well stand up to objective analysis as being good positions to hold, but an unconscious, emotional attachment probably came first – subsequently clothed with logical defenses. If I’m right, the question ends up being to ask what we can do together that doesn’t involve discussing our differences and which will allow us to interact in a way that teaches us that we’re part of the same community and that very few of us are monsters.

Basically, the more alien we regard “the Other” as being, the bigger problems we’re going to have. We have to reduce the alienation somehow.

None of us has the god-like perspective it would take to be truly objective. All of our experiences are mediated by the time & place in which we find ourselves, our past experiences, the gaps in our knowledge, and any number of other biasing factors. Media we consume add their biases — and it’s not necessarily a left or right thing. Even journalists striving to be objective are limited by space – and so have to pick & choose which facts or what context to mention and what to leave out. Newspapers and broadcasts are going to include deviations from the norm (man-bites-dog rather than dog-bites-man) and stories that increase subscriptions or get viewers to watch through the commercials.

But, it seems to me (and this is hardly original) that social media algorithms are taking this to the next level. I hesitate to make too much of this because I think there is a tendency to fear-monger new trends and technologies. (“Comic books are ruining our youth!”)  The algorithms are designed to increase engagement between the user and the social media platform. Emotional experiences are more likely to keep the user’s attention and negative emotions are easier to provoke than positive ones. So, you end up with a lot of people spending a lot of time viewing the world through the lens of a platform designed to keep you coming back by making you anxious or angry.

I hesitate to make this analogy because I don’t have any expertise in mental health, but I wonder if this is in some ways analogous to what an individual goes through with depression. Their brain filters out the positive and emphasizes the negative, creating a feeling of hopelessness. Only in this case, it’s not brain chemistry doing the filtering but a business that wants you paying attention long enough to show you ads.

For what it’s worth, I’ve spent the last few days without checking Twitter or Facebook where I’m typically a heavy user. I’m not ready to judge that as good or bad, but it’s different. This will auto-post to Twitter. I don’t think I have anything similar set up on Facebook.

(General programming note for blog readers in the West Lafayette school district: I am a candidate in the 2020 West Lafayette School Board election. There are four seats open, and I would like to fill one of them. If you want to know more about my campaign, ask questions, request a yard sign, please go to https://masson.us/schoolboard.)

Back in 2015, I offered some thoughts on Being a Concerned Citizen. I’m re-posting that below. It’s my sense that there is much more interest in government now than there was back then. A couple of notes: I sort of specifically excluded civil rights protesters from this post. That strikes me as a different dynamic than what I have in mind here which is less about dramatic change and more about participating in the day-to-day grind of government to keep it responsive to the citizenry.

Also, this is not about how the government committee should respond to the citizens. That’s perhaps a post for a different day — but generally speaking, the board should be communicative and responsive to the citizens on the one hand while, on the other hand, recognizing that the folks who show up at meetings or are most active at any given time don’t necessarily speak for the public at large. On the openness front, adherence to the Open Door Law and the Access to Public Records Act is very important. Their existence acts as a sort of “panopticon,” improving the behavior of governmental bodies even when those tools aren’t actually used. (The Panopticon was a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham on the principle that you could improve prisoner behavior with fewer guards if the prisoner knew the guard could be watching at any time — with the ODL and APRA, the citizen could take an interest at any time.)

That said, you want the meetings to be open without turning them into something like government-by-YouTube-comment-section. I slag on YouTube, but I’m not even sure if those comment sections are that bad anymore. Newspaper comment sections are maybe a better example. If you’ve been online some place that allows unrestricted commenting on controversial issues, you know what I mean. The loudest and most aggrieved commenters can tend to dominate the conversation driving out more casual participants who don’t need that kind of hassle. A committee meeting, like a Presidential debate, needs rules and a moderator willing to enforce them; otherwise, you might find that nothing useful is being accomplished.

But that’s on the government side. Like I said, this post was intended for the citizen side. Here is what I posted back in 2015:

As we’re mired in our day-to-day parochial concerns, it’s nice to be reminded that there are people still working on the big picture stuff. Jennifer Chu, writing in SciTech Daily, has an article about likely discovery of life on Venus. Scientists have discovered phosphine in a layer of Venus’ atmosphere that is the most likely to be hospitable to life. Venus has an atmosphere that is really, really inhospitable to life — extreme heat and acidic clouds, among other things. But, there is apparently a pocket between 48 and 60 kilometers above the surface, where temperatures range from 30 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. If Venus had life, that’s where it would be expected. And that’s where they’ve detected phosphine.

Phosphine is associated with biological processes, and scientists have ruled out the non-biological explanations they can think of. So, their conclusion is that this probably means there is life of some kind in the air of the (relatively) hospitable pocket of Venus.

Extra-terrestrial life seems like kind of a big find. Josh Claybourn, writing on Facebook, suggested that the two most likely scenarios for the origin of that life would be that something hitched a ride on the Soviet probes to Venus 50 years ago or that something ejected from earth (debris from a meteor strike) made its way to Venus.

Two hundred and forty-six years ago:

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

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 entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, 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. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

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 kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a 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 imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring 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 into 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 abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat 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 endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

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. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.