The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

Tag: Declaration of Independence

  • Is Donald Trump a King? No, But Not for Lack of Trying

    king donald trump

    Most Americans know very little about the Declaration of Independence. For example, the document contains twenty-seven grievances against King George and the British government. What follows is list of the grievances. Notice how eerily similar many of the grievances are to those many Americans have against King wannabe Donald Trump.

    1. He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
    9. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
    10. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
    11. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
    12. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
    13. 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:
    14. For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
    15. For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
    16. For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
    17. For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
    18. For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
    19. For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
    20. 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:
    21. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
    22. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
    23. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
    24. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
    25. 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 & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
    26. 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.
    27. 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.

    And here’s a modern rendition of the twenty-seven grievances:

    1. He won’t approve laws that are necessary for the public good.
    2. He makes governors wait to pass laws until he gives his approval—and he often doesn’t.
    3. He refuses to pass laws that are important unless people give up their right to representation, which is too important to give up.
    4. He has made legislative meetings difficult by forcing them to be held in inconvenient, uncomfortable, or distant locations, just to wear people down.
    5. He has dissolved elected legislatures just because they opposed his invasions of people’s rights.
    6. After dissolving these governments, he’s refused to let new ones be formed, leaving people unprotected and exposed to disorder.
    7. He has blocked immigration and naturalization laws, making it harder for people to settle here.
    8. He has refused to let us set up a justice system that’s independent and fair.
    9. He controls judges entirely—they serve at his will and are paid by him.
    10. He has created many new offices and sent over a swarm of officials to harass and exploit us.
    11. He has kept standing armies among us during peacetime without our consent.
    12. He’s made the military more powerful than civilian governments.
    13. He has allowed foreign laws to override our own justice systems.
    14. He has allowed British soldiers to be housed in colonists’ homes without permission.
    15. He has protected soldiers who commit crimes by allowing them to avoid trial and punishment.
    16. He has cut off our trade with other countries.
    17. He has taxed us without our consent.
    18. He has denied us the right to trial by jury.
    19. He has taken people across the ocean to be tried unfairly in Britain for supposed crimes.
    20. He has tried to impose British law in Canada and expand it into our territory, threatening our laws and governments.
    21. He has taken away our charters (legal rights), abolished our laws, and changed our governments.
    22. He has suspended our legislatures and claimed the power to govern us directly.
    23. He has declared us outside of his protection and started a war against us.
    24. He has destroyed our towns, attacked our coasts, and harmed our people.
    25. He has sent foreign mercenaries (hired soldiers) to kill and destroy with cruelty unheard of in modern times.
    26. He has forced American citizens captured at sea to fight against their own country.
    27. He has stirred up domestic unrest and encouraged Native American attacks on frontier settlements.

    By my count, Trump has done most of the things on this list. Yet, his MAGA followers can’t or won’t see it; going so far as to say that maybe having Trump as an authoritarian king is not a bad idea. More than seven million Americans participated in nationwide No Kings rallies on Saturday — the largest single day political rally in U.S. history. These rallies suggest that Trump will not be made King Donnie without, hopefully, a spirited, raucous, non-violent fight. I am not convinced that civil war is avoidable, but we on the left need to make sure that we do all we can to press our demands in non-violent ways. In moments like these, we must follow in the steps of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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    You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

  • This is What Happens When a President Doesn’t Read

    donald trump

    It is well known that President Donald Trump doesn’t read books or daily briefings. When asked to say what the Declaration of Independence meant to him, Trump replied:

    Well, it means, exactly what it says. It’s a declaration, it’s a declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot, and it’s something very special to our country.

    Shouldn’t a president at least know the history behind the Declaration of Independence and what it means? Trump knows none of these things.

    The Daily Show covered Trump’s intellectual largesse in the following video clip:

    Video Link

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

    Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

    You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

  • Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Who Are the REAL Americans? by Bryan Fischer

    bryan fischer

    Considerable amounts of ink and pixels have been spilled in recent months over the question of who is an American, who is unAmerican, and who is anti-American. There is an easy way to tell: Use the Declaration of Independence as your guide.

    The Declaration is the most quintessentially American document ever produced. It defines in unmistakable and unambiguous terms what America stands for. Simply put, someone who affirms the truth claims of the Declaration is a true American. Someone who is indifferent to its truth claims is un-American. And someone who is hostile to its truth claims is anti-American.

    ….

    What, then, does it mean to be an “American?” 

    First, Americans believe in absolute truth. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, … ” said the founders. There is such a thing as truth, an American would say, and we believe in it, and we defend it. An American believes, as did the founders, that certain things are true and other things are false. There is none of this business of everybody having his own truth. In fact, the founders observed that there are certain truths that are so obviously true on the very face of things that they do not even require proof; they are “self-evident.”

    Thus someone who is indifferent to the question of truth is unAmerican because he does not care about this fundamental American ideal. And someone who is hostile to the idea of truth, or who is hostile to the self-evident truths the founders affirmed, is anti-American because he has pitted himself against a bedrock American principle.

    Second, Americans believe man is a created being, not an evolved one. The very first self-evident truth the founders embraced is that “all men are created equal,” and that there is a “Creator” with a capital “C” who has granted them certain fundamental, non-negotiable rights. In other words, an American does not believe that man emerged from the primordial glop with some kind of ancestral connection to baboons and chimpanzees. No, an American believes, as the founders did, that man has been created in the image of God and is distinct and far above members of the animal kingdom in worth, value, and dignity. Man is not just a “trousered ape” but is an entirely different order of being altogether—a being who has not just a soul but also a spirit.

    ….

    So an American believes man is a created being. Someone who is indifferent to the question of whether man is created or evolved is unAmerican. And someone who actively opposes the concept of a Creator and the concept of man as created in God’s image is anti-American.

    Third, an American believes our rights come to us from God, not from government. An American believes that such rights are “unalienable,” which means that no earthly power has the moral authority to deprive us of any single one of these rights because they are a gift to us from God.

    ….

    So an American believes that our rights come to us from a Creator God. An unAmerican is indifferent to the question. And an anti-American vigorously contests that idea and believes that rights are a gift to us from a beneficent government rather than the Creator.

    Fourth, an American believes that babies have a right to be born. An American believes that no earthly power—not Congress, not the Supreme Court, not Planned Parenthood, nor a hospital in England—has any moral or legal right whatsoever to deprive a baby in the womb or a disabled newborn of its right to live. An anti-American is someone who supports the killing of babies in the womb and tries to lock up the Americans who expose this evil. Thus they seek to deprive babies of their right to life and undercover investigators of their right to liberty.

    Fifth, an American believes that bakers, florists and photographers have a God-given right to liberty, a God-given right to manage their business affairs according to the dictates of their own conscience. An American believes that he should not be required by government to do work against his will, which is slavery, or to do work that violates his own conscience, which is tyranny. An American in name only believes that such artisans should be punished, fined, put out of business or sued for everything they own. And someone who is indifferent to this issue is not a bad person; he is just an unAmerican one.

    Sixth, an American believes that the right to private property is a sacred right, a gift from God, and that government is not allowed to deprive homeowners of their property or deny farmers and ranchers the use of their property (apart, of course, from the proper use of eminent domain or as a consequence of the commission of a crime). The founders would be appalled at the way in which the abuse of eminent domain and the use of environmental regulations have shredded this unalienable right. An American believes the right to private property is a gift from God. An anti-American despises this right and treats it as something that government can readily dispose of if it will serve the progressive agenda.

    — Bryan Fischer, American Family Association, The Declaration Exposes Americans in Name Only, July 10, 2017