THE [UPDATED] DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, MARCH 2nd, 1996.

THE [UPDATED] DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Proposed by people of Texas on MARCH 2nd, 1996.
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted; and so far from being a guarantee for their inestimable and unalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their suppression. When the republican constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a representative republic, composed of home-ruled counties, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the military and the federal corporation, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the ever ready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants. When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary agencies sent forth to enforce a new regime upon them at the point of assault rifles.
When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abduction on the part of the corporate regime anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements, in such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and imprescriptible right of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such a regime, and restore a lawful government in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their pursuit of welfare and happiness.
Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the U. S. Inc., and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth.
The Washington Mafia, through its execrable doctrine of "Manifest Destiny," wooed and induced the majority of the population of Texas in 1845 to accept its - as yet unfulfilled - promise of statehood, under the pledged faith of a written constitution, that they should enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government promised to them by the forefathers of the mother country, the united States of America.
In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the American People have acquiesced to the changes made in the government by the ruling elite, who, having overturned the constitution of their land, now offer, as the cruel alternative, either to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyrannies, the combined despotism of the gun and the corporate regime.
It has sacrificed our welfare to that of the corporate state, by which our interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course of legislation, carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in an indecipherable legal jargon, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms for the establishment of a republican government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented to the legislature a republican constitution, which was, without a just cause, contemptuously rejected.
It has incarcerated in dungeons, for long periods of time, several of our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our constitution, and the establishment of a lawful government, on the pretext of ludicrous trumped-up charges, making them thus federal political prisoners.
It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen.
It has failed to establish an adequate system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources, (as witnessed by the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports,) although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government.
It has suffered the military commanders, stationed among us, to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tyranny, thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizens, and rendering the military superior to the civil power.
It has dissolved, through election fraud, the freedom to choose our own representatives, and obliged our former representatives to fly for their lives from the seat of government, thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of representation.
It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detachments to seize and carry them into admiralty tribunals for trial, in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and the constitution.
It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commissioning carpetbaggers, and empowering them to seize our businesses and convey the property of our citizens to far distant parts for confiscation.
It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion of atheism, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living God.
It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defense -- the rightful property of freemen -- and formidable only to tyrannical governments.
It has invaded our country both by sea and by land, with the intent to lay waste our territory, and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary international army advancing, to carry on against us a war of extermination.
It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless jack-booted thugs, with their black fatigues and unchecked power, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless churches.
It has been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible perpetrator and victim of successive military experiments and has continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrannical regime.
These, and other grievances, have been patiently borne by the people of Texas, until they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Must we then take up arms in defense of the national constitution?  We appealed to our American institutions for assistance; our appeal has been made in vain; though years have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the interior.  We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the American people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therefore of a militaristic corporate regime; that they are, by and large, unfit to be free, and incapable of self government.
The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation.
WE, therefore, the people of Texas, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with the United States has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a FREE, SOVEREIGN, and INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the Supreme Arbiter of the destiny of nations.