
Declaration of Independence in American (1921) - flannery
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/decind.html
======
htaunay
_He monkeyed with the courts, and didn 't hire enough judges to do the work,
and so a person had to wait so long for his case to come up that he got sick
of waiting, and went home, and so never got what was coming to him._

 _He made a lot of new jobs, and give them to loafers that nobody knowed
nothing about, and the poor people had to pay the bill, whether they could or
not._

 _Making us pay taxes without asking us whether we thought the things we had
to pay taxes for was something that was worth paying taxes for or not._

Time passes, but some things don't change.

~~~
Yhippa
One cool thing about learning Latin in high school was reading books from two-
thousand years ago. Take Ovid's _Ars Amatoria_ for example. He was the
original PUA (from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_Amatoria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_Amatoria)):
"The first two books, aimed at men, contain sections which cover such topics
as 'not forgetting her birthday', 'letting her miss you - but not for long'
and 'not asking about her age'."

~~~
schoen
I didn't remember that the ancient Romans observed birthdays as we do, but
sure enough, it's in there:

> Magna superstitio tibi sit natalis amicae:

> Quaque aliquid dandum est, illa sit atra dies.

("Your girlfriend's birthday should be a source of great dread for you:
whenever it's time to give something, that's a dark day.")

------
smhenderson
_When, during the Wilson-Palmer saturnalia of oppressions [1918-1920],
specialists in liberty began protesting that the Declaration plainly gave the
people the right to alter the government under which they lived and even to
abolish it altogether, they encountered the utmost incredulity._

I find this true today as well. A lot of people just can't seem to accept the
idea that the founding fathers of the USA wanted to allow their descendants
the same right to start over that they were exercising at the time.

I must admit that even given an appreciation of that I am hard pressed to
imagine what a popular uprising and establishment of a new government would
look like in today's America.

~~~
Swizec
A civil war in the US would be brutal. On the US _and_ on global economy.

The devastation of modern western society would be absolute. I can't even
begin to imagine what the outcome would be.

Mind you, the US government has the largest military force in the world by
far. Bigger than the next 3 or 4 biggest militaries combined.

Does anyone _really_ want to fight that? The answer is probably No.

~~~
pdx
> Does anyone really want to fight that? The answer is probably No.

You won't be fighting the US military. Many of them will join with you. They
are people, not killing machines. They are your neighbors and the sons and
daughters of your neighbors. They will not fire on their countrymen because a
politician told them to.

The men and women in our military swore to uphold the constitution. They did
not swear to be the thugs for a group of elites who got elected only through
virtue of millions upon millions of dollars of campaign contributions from
organizations that do not have the best interest of this nation as their goal.

~~~
Swizec
Hahahahahahahahaha. Sorry but your naivete is amusing.

Sure, I may have been 5 years old when I went through a [very short] civil
war, but I still remember the news. Many soldiers didn't even know _why_ they
were being asked to shoot this or that. While in the barracks they were kept
under strict radio silence from outside and most had no idea a civil war had
started. They were just told to go there and shoot over there. They didn't
know if they were shooting at their neighbors from back home, at somebody they
hate, or what.[1]

Eventually news spread and the war got very very bloody as people who used to
be comrades became personally involved in drinking the kool-aid. Luckily the
bloody parts were removed from where I lived, but a lot of my classmates in
elementary school were refugees.

Civil war ain't nothing to sneeze at. It is the worst type of war.

[1] There's a video from a private telling all of this to a news crew. Seeing
it on TV is one of my earliest memories. It's in serbocroatian and I don't
know if there's a version with English subtitles. ->
[https://www.facebook.com/zetraprojekt/videos/865414093588116...](https://www.facebook.com/zetraprojekt/videos/865414093588116/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_Yugoslavia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_Yugoslavia)

~~~
curried_haskell
I think what he's getting at is a valid point. It won't just be rebels against
the military. If the rebellion or revolution picks up enough steam,
significant elements of the military will likely defect to the other side and
in a very real way the war would be the US military vs itself. Ex-US soldiers,
officers, generals, with clandestine support from foreign powers like China
and Russia, would be taking on the remaining part of the US military.

Or the US splits and the revolution is turned into a North vs South, East vs
West, type of civil war.

~~~
Swizec
I agree, eventually the military breaks up and starts fighting itself.

But you're still essentially fighting the US military. The biggest baddest
military in the world. Surely the US military agrees that fighting the US
military is a Bad Idea (tm).

Point is, civil war is _messy_. There's no clear right or wrong, good guy or
bad guy, it's by definition neighbor killing neighbor, friend against friend,
sibling versus sibling. Everyone thinks they are protecting the One True Way
Forward to make the country great again.

~~~
pm90
The US military is a highly sophisticated war machine but ultimately it
requires resources to support its operations. No military can ignore the cold
hard facts of logistics, something that many armies have done to their own
demise. If there is no continental US to provide the food, materiel or the
money to pay for it, I doubt the machine could last very long.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
If the entire continental US rebels, who exactly are they fighting against?

If there is a civil war, you kind of have to assume that each side is going to
have access to some of the US's resources.

------
bravura
H. L. Mencken also wrote: “As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great
and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire
at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

~~~
dmckeon
Anyone who has not yet seen
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy)
might do well to spend 90 minutes watching it, and contemplating the state of
their nation.

------
vumgl
On the same note, a while ago I mapped Washington's farewell address. The
original to vernacular.

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fsaJDi5AMLicz1HKd4tgmiCc...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fsaJDi5AMLicz1HKd4tgmiCcuC9RreSddfVKnO9K90U/pub)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> The name of american, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must
> always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived
> from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the
> same religion, manners, habits, and political principles.

> You’ve gotta be Americans before all else. You’re for the most part the same
> religion and culture...

It's interesting that Washington acknowledged the binding effect that shared
culture has on a nation. I see the Nordic countries praised often on HN, and
the counterpoint is always some variety of "but they have little diversity". I
wonder what Washington would say about the US and the effects of a variety of
ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural heritages now?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
The US has always had a diverse variety of ethnic, linguistic, religious and
cultural heritage. I'd guess that's part of the reason he's expressly telling
them to ignore the differences.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
That's not what Washington thought:

> ....you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles...

~~~
ZeroGravitas
You left off the start:

"With slight shades of difference, ..."

Given that egregious quote mining, I guess you'd be immune to subtle arguments
about context e.g. does someone stand at the head of an exclusively Lutheran
Church and make a speech about how they should ignore their religious
differences, no, that would be redundant. Which implies he knows there are
differences enough for them to turn on each other if they don't make an effort
to pull together.

------
Houshalter
Despite being written in 95 year old slang, I find this surprisingly readable.
Especially compared to the original. There's a lot of broken grammar though. I
wonder if that was how people actually spoke, or exaggerated for effect.

~~~
aristus
Mencken's whole schtick was to be a populist intellectual. At one point he was
so famous that a letter from Germany simply addressed "Mencken, USA" got
delivered just fine.

His usual essays and reportage use more elevated language than this. IIRC he
wrote this to make the point that "American" was a separate language from
"English", and stuck in every Americanism he could think of.

The median American today probably speaks better English than back then.
Literacy is up, radio and TV are universal so you don't just hear people on
your block, fewer of us are recent immigrants, etc.

------
wgrover
Remarkable how much this reads like the libretto of _Hamilton_ , 90 years
earlier.

------
Yhippa
> Making us pay taxes without asking us whether we thought the things we had
> to pay taxes for was something that was worth paying taxes for or not.

Reminds me of the fight for D.C. statehood.

------
c3534l
I think the original is easier to understand and is written in plainer speech.
But the 1920s version still has a lot of poetry to it, which surprises me
since I always assumed that what made the original beautiful was the exact
words and phrases used.

------
SerLava
I was really excited about referencing this, until the racist part. 1921 you
old dog.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
> until the racist part

This one?

"He stirred up the Indians, and give them arms and ammunition, and told them
to go to it, and they have killed men, women and children, and don't care
which."

That translates to "The King was protecting the Indians too much." Which was
probably true.

~~~
SerLava
The first racist part was about South Americans and "coons".

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
Saw that later. Bah, the code words have now changed, the feeling is still
there.

When you get to call the Southern European countries literally PIGS in print,
without apology or consequences ...

------
tn13
Honestly it appeared like an assessment of Obama administration.

> He made a lot of new jobs, and give them to loafers that nobody knowed
> nothing about, and the poor people had to pay the bill, whether they could
> or not.

> Making us pay taxes without asking us whether we thought the things we had
> to pay taxes for was something that was worth paying taxes for or not.

~~~
brunorossi
Actually, net number of jobs getting created are for the educated not the
poor:
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-30/americans-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-30/americans-
with-more-education-have-taken-almost-every-job-created-in-the-recovery)

~~~
tn13
I think you failed to understand the sentence.

>He made a lot of new jobs

As you know government cant create jobs except for government servants such as
TSA screening agents. Their salary bill has be then paid for by the
hardworking earning Americans. I think that is what that sentence means.

The Bloomberg article is talking about jobs that are creating by private
industry. Government has no hand in it. If those business run a profit those
jobs will be sustained else they will wither away unlike TSA people who will
get paid no matter how much the passengers hate them.

~~~
brunorossi
I wouldn't defend the TSA. They have abysmal performance, but they are a small
fraction of the country. My point is that most people being employed are not
loafers. In addition, taxpayers that fund the federal government are generally
the upper half of income earners. The poor really don't pay that much in
taxes.

~~~
tn13
> upper half of income earners

Moot of us are in the upper half of income earners. Those are he people who
are working hard and keeping the economy running. But it is false to say these
are the only victims. More taxes and more regulations inevitably means slower
growth of small business leading to less employment of poor people. Not to
mention the inflation that hurts the lower income half significantly more as
it is an indirect tax on cash you hold.

