Bob Bauman JD, Editor, Offshore Confidential
Dear Sovereign Investor,
The Declaration of Independence is one of the most memorable freedom documents of all time. It proclaims every human being’s right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
One of our Nation’s Founding Fathers and our 2nd U.S. president, John Adams, left us some words to consider this Fourth of July:
“You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”
Adams and his political rival, Thomas Jefferson, our 3rd U.S. president, both died on July 4, 1826.
Ten days before he died at his Virginia plantation, Monticello, Jefferson sent a remarkable letter to the citizens of Washington, D.C., saying he was too ill to honor their invitation to be with them on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
While his words were addressed to the citizens of Washington, Jefferson was speaking to all future generations of Americans – to you and to me.
His letter is considered one of the sublime exaltations of individual and national liberty — his personal vision of the Declaration of Independence he helped to write and of America as examples to the world of the blessings of self-government.
In it, Jefferson expressed his wish that “the annual return of this day” would “forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”
What Would Our Founding Fathers Think?
In light of Jefferson’s admonitions about preserving our rights, it is disquieting to speculate what he would think should he return to see what is happening in modern America.
I think Jefferson, a man of the world and a brilliant intellectual, would be astonished, even sickened, at what has happened to our cherished rights. These are the same liberties for which Adams noted the great sacrifice that had been made by so many.
Ask yourself, have we as a nation and as a people shown “an undiminished devotion” to the rights Jefferson, Adams and so many others fought for — rights for which over a million Americans have died to protect?
How could the 3rd president comprehend that both a “conservative” 43rd president and a “liberal” 44th president had forsaken the constitutional rights about which he spoke so eloquently?
President Barack Obama, as a lawyer and professor who taught constitutional law, has failed to live up to his campaign pledge “to restore our Constitution and the rule of law”… both of which President George W. Bush, certainly no student of the law, did so much to weaken and distort.
Both presidents claimed to have sweeping powers as commander in chief that allowed them to bypass the Constitution and other legal constraints when fighting terrorism, an approach that trampled individual rights.
Did They Die in Vain?
This year is the 150th anniversary of America’s bloodiest conflict, the Civil War. More soldiers died in a moment or two at Antietam, Gettysburg or Fredericksburg than have fallen in Iraq or Afghanistan. But there is a rough and final equality among every one of the dead from then to now.
They died before their time, much of their promise unrealized, and in the service of their country. Lincoln at Gettysburg uttered a string of negatives – “We cannot dedicate; we cannot consecrate; we cannot hallow this ground” – to express our inability to ever fully understand or recognize sacrifice of this degree.
But Lincoln did suggest that we as Americans ought to at least make the attempt.
But how many Americans today would be willing to die, as more than a million before us have done, for our freedoms and liberties? Do we really still have those liberties? Or have our freedoms been taken from us, devaluing the sacrifice of all those who died. Did they die in vain? In his eloquent Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln suggested that what we do – you and I – will determine the answer to that momentous question.
American independence from Great Britain was fought and won against great odds. But to an incredible degree the U.S. government, under both political parties, has now replicated and become even more destructive of American liberties than King George III and the British ever were.
Under the undefined, open-ended “war on terror” and the failed “war on drugs” politicians have steadily eroded our American liberties. The PATRIOT Act brought back the hated colonial British Writs of Assistance and has all but destroyed Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Indefinite detentions and military commissions resemble the Crown’s secret Star Chambers that had ended before the Revolution began in 1776.
Undiminished Devotion Needed Now
On this 235th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, 185 years after Jefferson expressed his dying wish that “the annual return of this day” would “forever refresh our recollections of these rights and an undiminished devotion to them,” no honest observant American can say with any certainty that we have honored his wishes.
And yet, it is not too late for Americans to reclaim and reassert the rights for which so many gave their last full measure of devotion.
So what’s to be done?
Well, the American people need to wake up and demonstrate the same fearless devotion to freedom shown by our ancestors – even if that means living, working or doing business beyond American shores.
Many politicians deem these practices as “un-American,” or even criminal. But when we recommend offshore financial havens for placement of bank accounts or asset protection trusts, or suggest countries for a possible foreign residence, we’re not doing so to be “unpatriotic” or anti-American. Quite the contrary – we offer these alternatives because we haven’t lost sight of what it means to be true American patriots.
To borrow the words of our dear friend and Sovereign Society founder, the late John Pugsley…
“What, then, is the defining attribute of a patriotic American?
“Certainly, it could not be that the individual should kneel and unquestioningly accept the authority of the Nanny State – paying any tribute it demands and obeying all its edicts just because it wraps itself in symbols – the Stars and Stripes, or the Presidential Seal or the Washington Monument.
“True patriotism to America must involve a dedication to the same principles that motivated our Founding Fathers when they banded together in rebellion against the tyranny of King George. If there was one thing our Founding Fathers would have wanted to see instilled in the American spirit, it would be a belief that all individuals are endowed with the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
“Real American patriots will stand true to the principles of the American Revolution, and refuse to kneel before state power. If this means protecting their assets or their freedom by putting them beyond the reach of a tyrant, that is what, in good conscience, they must do. In that act, they would follow the lead of the millions of immigrants who fled state tyranny in their own countries in search of liberty in America.”
As true American patriots, we must take it upon ourselves to stay loyal to our principles… even if that means we escape the incursions on our liberties by becoming a citizen of another country or moving some of our wealth offshore.
The truth is that the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution are being gutted and their sacred guarantees rapidly are being destroyed. Once they are gone there will be no turning back. We must act now before it’s too late.
It is my fervent prayer that God may bless America – now more than ever.
Faithfully yours,
Bob Bauman, JD
Editor, Offshore Confidential