Founder's Message: Declaration of Independence 1776

Roland Hopkins, New England Real Estate Journal

While I admit that I have opinions about politics and religion and sports just like everyone else, for obvious reasons I go out of my way to keep it out of the newspaper. If I said I was a Yankee fan, the Red Sox fans would cancel their subscriptions and visa versa. If I was a Republican, I'd lose the Democrats, and so on and so forth. You know what I'm getting at.

How about this stance? I'm open minded and consider everyone's views. That gets me off the editorial hook. In my spare time (who has spare time these days?) I enjoy writing novels. I even had one published. Lately, I have discovered that I can do much research on Google, thus I am learning a lot of this about geography and history that I probably was taught in school and forgot. The other day I ran into the Declaration of Independence 1776. My math says that it was written 233 years ago. I also discovered that historically the average empire lasts approximately 200 years. My math says that ours has already outlasted those by 33 years. I guess that means we must be doing something right. Right?

How many of you readers know what the Declaration of Independence says? It is supposedly the rules of our government and what our forefathers fought and died for. How many of our senators and representatives know what it says? If I was a mass media news reporter, I'd ask them at a news conference and watch how embarrassed they become.

Like most of us, I watched more political TV than usual in 2008 and maybe became too interested in something that I ultimately realized I personally could do nothing about. A vote for a politician that has never run a business and never served in the military is very difficult in times when those are our two biggest concerns and problems. Agree? For your information, here's the Declaration: "These rights give us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are instituted among men deriving their powers from the the consent of the governed." (By the way, you and I are the governed.)

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Now that you've read and understood it, it becomes obvious that your Washington reps haven't abided by it for as far back as any of us can remember. Well, maybe Eisenhower did. What is the answer? Maybe we should all email our reps and see what happens. If enough of us do that and they recognize a few of the names (yours) they might react. What do you think?

Roland Hopkins is the founder of the New England Real Estate Journal, Norwell, Mass.