Intolerable Acts

April 19 is a day which has so much meaning to Americans for reasons both good and tragically horrible.

It is a lightning rod day all the things that represent the best and worst of our country. In the dark past of our colonial beginnings, it was the day that marked the first “Shot Heard Round The World”. On the previous day, the British fleet surged forward into Boston to try and stamp out a revolution before it had a chance to start.

The colonists had been ready though and moved their strategic supplies before hand. Their tolerance had been tested in the previous three years with a series of increasingly restrictive acts from “their” parliament. Its hard in this day and age for any American born soul to imagine that we were once part of another country. While my forefathers arrived at varying time in America’s history, most came from countries that flew the Union Jack.

That same flag dominated the landscape in 1774. Through a series of wars and engagements, the British ruled the fledgling colony and saw it as a cash cow that would prop them up during their various wars and conquests of other lands. Their ruthless efficiency was only outmatched by their ability to give the appearance of governing in a way that ultimately gave advantages to the rulers over the ruled.

The Intolerable Acts (otherwise known as the Coercive Acts) set off a fiery response from the thirteen colonies. Up until 1774, most saw themselves as loyal subjects to the King and even after the acts were put in place, there was not a unanimous reaction to them. Four of the Acts were issued in a direct response to the Tea Party in Boston in 1773. These draconian measures would have shocked an English citizen living in London but were meant to put down any thoughts of rebellion in the colonies.

The Acts were the primary fuse which formed the Continental Congress and would eventually lead to the American Revolutionary War. The key message that started it all was No Taxation Without Representation, a direct challenge to not just the King, but to Parliament itself. The English Parliament was addicted to the money it had levied against the American Colonies to support their Empire and the Colonists were challenging their very sovereignty. Many at the time thought the idea was without equal in its audacity.

The Intolerable acts included the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, The Administration of Justice Act, and the Quartering Act.

You can read more details of those actions here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intolerable_Acts

On April 18th, the British fleet began the actions which resulted in the war which would start the next day. Paul Revere made his famous ride which allowed the Patriots to gain an edge for their preparation. April 19th was not the first spilling of blood, but it marked a point of no return.

In the year 2012, we find ourselves at a crossroads. The country is once again divided by political ideology, taxation which has been so twisted and bent that it creates class envy and feelings of inequity. Tension between the various divided citizens is fanned like a flame in the prairie by an unrelenting wind in order to gain some kind of political advantage.

Where is the leadership?

Which direction will we take that can save the Union paid for with so much blood? Will the ideas of the founding fathers be brushed aside in the name of some foreign philosophy which has been proven to be a failure in so many other countries around the world.

People long to be free.

Good men are willing to sacrifice all to ensure that freedom. Surrendering freedom for a lifetime of servitude to a government that depends on abject slavery has always resulted in the same outcome: that government will ultimately fail when the breath of freedom bursts out of the lungs of the oppressed.

There are only two outcomes of this coming election

.A continued march to slavery under an all intrusive government. Or one last chance to show that the American spirit lives. If we choose the first, we will not survive as a nation. If we chose the second, those who would be willing to give their freedom for a crust of bread and a drink of foul water will be incensed. In either event, it pays for all true citizens of the America that was created in those chaotic days to be prepared.

I choose Freedom. I choose the original plan from the Founding Fathers that recognized the Lord. These words say it better than I could ever hope to:

“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.”