Independence From What? - 2

Sometimes people make declarations.

There is even a federal statute for it (28 USC §1746).

But what is a declaration of independence?

It is a declaration that one has been dependent but is changing the game, that one is now going to be independent.

But independent from what?

That brings up last year's post:

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Last year, on the 4th of July, the Declaration of Independence was posted.

A few days later (time for the hangovers to subside) in a post the question was asked "Independence From What?", indicating that it was not a person or place our ancestors sought independence from, but as we will see, it was from certain ideas.

Of the list of items set forth as the reasons for declaring independence from The Ideology of the British Empire, was the reason:

He [the king] has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

(Independence From What?). The king made the military subject to himself alone, and imposed the military upon "the little people".

Recently President Obama removed a general from a command because that general was promoting disrespect toward civilian power.

Nevertheless, according to a general who later became president, that may be an illusion because, while we left a place, the idea we thought we left has returned like a weed returning to a garden:

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual --is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

(President Dwight Eisenhower, emphasis added). The Unitary Executive Theory was preached during the Bush II Regime years in a manner that made it indistinguishable from the notion of a king-high priest who did his own thing, the rest of the government be damned.

During the Bush II daze the president was wrongly called "The Commander In Chief" of the people, a perversion of his command of only the military:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States

(Article II, Section 2, emphasis added). The office of the president is not commander in chief of the people.

Originally "commander in chief" only applied temporarily when the nation was in a war declared by congress, because we did not have "standing armies" back then like we do today.

We have come a long way baby, but it has not all been in the direction of the freedom once envisioned.

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Stay independent.