BoofleBlog

My mother was listening to NPR this morning when they read the Declaration of Independence in its entirety. She hadn’t ever heard it before — not surprising that she didn’t get it in school since she’s English. It got me wondering how many Americans have actually read it or know what it says.

You really should read the original, but if you can’t be bothered, here’s a paraphrase.

Dear King George,

We humbly beseech that you bite us.

Sincerely,

John Hancock et al.

The longer paraphrase looks like this:

We’re unhappy, we’re not going to be English anymore, and we feel like we should tell everyone why.

We believe that people are born with certain God-given rights and that they form governments to ensure them. When governments stop protecting the rights of their citizens, the citizens have a duty to change them. These governments shouldn’t be changed on a whim, but that’s not something to worry about since most men will go along with almost anything to avoid change. That things have gotten so bad that we’re willing to chance the unknown tells you just what a bastard King George is. We’re going to list some of what he has done, just so you’ll know we’re right.

[The gist of the list is that Georgie is treating us like a conquered people instead of like loyal subjects. What a prick.]

We keep asking him not to do these things, but he won’t take our calls.

We’ve asked other British subjects to help us, reminding them that we’re all brothers. They’ve ignored us and we’re done playing with them, too.

We’re not English anymore. We’re our own country and you don’t want to mess with us.

John Hancock et al.

(P.S. Bite us.)