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.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humanity is created equal, that all living persons are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights, governments are instituted among the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter it, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
When a long train of abuses and usurpations evinces a design to reduce them under a perversion of power, it is their right, it is their duty to provide new guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient and growing sufferance of these American people for at least 40 years; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to require change. The recent history of the United States, its Congress, its presidencies, is one of repeated injuries and usurpations, all owing to special interests and other lobbies that have perverted individual and especially middle-class opportunity, dashed hopes for a renewed economy and set aside the promise that each succeeding generation will improve upon the last.
We, therefore, We the People of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled not in one place but existing as free humanity in every state of the great union, do solemnly publish and declare, that we are, and of right ought to be free and independent of all Special Interest, that such lobbies have no right to demand slavery from us, to be beholden to their thirst for greed, to give up our liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to forego any reasonable and secure future for our young, to abandon the glue of the nation, that is, its middle class.
We therefore declare that from this date forth, We the People are absolved from special-interest allegiance in favor of publicly funded election of all in Congress and the president him(her)self, with no special-interest money allowed as influence of any sort.
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our sacred honor.
(With apologies to the Founders.)
