George Washington / Arnold Friberg

July 4, 1776, was born out of Christianity’s grace, and need to culminate the journey for Rights and Liberties, known as Freedom, famously started by Moshe, who we know and lose as Moses, demanding: Let my people go! 

The Declaration of Independence serves as victory of God’s Light over immoral Darkness of Tyrants. The Star-Spangled Banner is a reminder that the fight for American Freedom is the battle between Light and Darkness.

That the fight is perpetual, and each generation must, to paraphrase my favorite Founding Father-Hero, Thomas Jefferson: refresh the Tree of Liberty from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. 

The Declaration is a uniquely American fight: to be humanity’s best, and to be able to do so in our own sovereign land. Of course, if the other 192 member nations of the United Nations were to agree to join our Union, even as a protectorate, we could lift more of humanity right where they are, without diluting America and Americanism.

This would allow the Blessing of America be bestowed upon them right where they are. We do need, as I reminded Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni last September, to preserve and enforce Saint Ambrose’s command, issued in 387 A.D. when he was Arch-Bishop of Milan: “Do in Rome, as the Romans do.” 

Also Read: SPECIAL EDITION on America 250

This remains a necessary key for protecting our own sovereignty. Our recent 14A Birth-Citizenship debate, started by President Donald J. Trump, SCOTUS Order being recently issued, has served to highlight our need to recalibrate, at least culturally, by insisting upon the return of the great “American Melting Pot,” use of English in the public square, and only those who love America to stay in America.

Most precious of citizens are those who wish to honor our root with their “sacred honor.” Unwanted are those, who wish to make America in the image of what they left behind. 

I am so grateful to my late great parents, in particular, my Father,S.N. Batra, the greatest man I have ever known and who lived his secular life effectuating the principles of Saint Francis of Assisi, until he retired and took the cloth. He is the only one I know who left India to become poor and embrace poverty, so he could teach me.

That I resonated with, and responded to, Sir Edmund Burke’s call to action: “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for some good men to do nothing” in conjunction with the Torah’s “Justice, justice you shall pursue” has made me a work in progress. That he chose to migrate to these United States of America is his biggest bequest, for America is, and must always remain, Humanity’s last best hope of, and for, actual Freedom enjoyed by actual Patriots who love America. 

On July 4, 1776, the Founding Fathers assembled in Philadelphia, and signed a Declaration of Independence. By doing so, they valiantly exceeded the limitation in the Bible: “ "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's”(Gospels of Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, and Luke 20:25). Even Jesus wished for a peaceful accommodation and payment of taxes. 

Not so, for our intellectually giant Ancestors. They claimed “natural right,” granted by our Creator, to effectuate European Enlightenment, a powerful wave created by Thinkers that included, the horse-hair habit wearing German Monk, Martin Luther, and his Protest to corruption, especially, judicial and ecclesiastical corruption, including, sale of papal indulgences. 

Our Founding Fathers left the Magna Carta of 1215, at Runnymeade, in the dustbin of history, as that instrument acknowledged that it was the King, who held all power, but was abdicating some of it to his then-feudal lords in that Instrument. Our Founders went straight to God for our Rights and Liberties, and asserted from that from us did a government arises, or would fall if it violated the rights and liberties of her citizens.

The state of the union is in present-day trouble, as state governments are experimenting with unlawful and Godless Communism, in direct violation of our Founding Documents, and the former discredited Senator McCarthy has started to look appealing to many. Absent clear action, we will be in the ICU of history.

In fact and law, our Founding Fathers embedded our Declaration in the Natural Rights granted by our Creator. So Lincoln, at Gettysburg, was merely restating in easier language: "government of the people, by the people, for the people” what our Founders relied upon on July 4th, 1776 to so Declare.

So, “we the people,” American citizenry, was therefore the first in humanity’s competing thirst for power, between Shepard and Sheep, to win for everyday Americans based upon God’s Grace. 

What the Founding Fathers did, they did it honorably in their Declaration. Back then, there was honor even in war. So, they stated their intentions. They stated their causes. They stated their basis and right to do so, to wit:

“ The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events...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 men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”;

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”;

“ The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. ...”

“ We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States;”

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” (Emphasis added)

After the failed Articles of Confederation, our unique co-equally separated powers regime, the Constitution, followed in 1787 and became effective on June 21, 1788. Still, it has pockets of absolute power. Then, the first Ten Bill of Rights were ratified on December 15, 1791, which mostly delivered on the Declaration’s assertion of Natural Rights held by the American Citizen. 

In 1814, Francis Scott Key, seeing our Flag kept being raised up to fly over Fort McHenry, despite heavy English bombardment, wrote not just our national anthem, but our destiny laced prophecy - which is our need to perpetually defend America:  

“And the rockets' red glare, The bombs bursting in air Gave proof through the night That our flag was still there.” 
Freedom needs to be defended, always, from enemies foreign and domestic. Foreign Agent Registration Act is insufficient. 

Finally, after Gettysburg, and Civil War with suspension of Habeas Corpus, the glorious Fourteenth Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868. It singularly delivered on the entirety of the promise in our Declaration of Independence: rights and liberties, in equal measure, to all Americans, both in process due and protection of law.

For the first time, every American’s natural rights, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, was legally effective in pushing back against over-reach by both federal government as well as every state of our union.

Thurgood Marshall and Connie Baker Motley effectively used the Fourteenth Amendment in Brown v Bd. Of Ed, in 1954, to desegregate education, Later, in hospitality: restaurants and hotels. It’s mainly died since then.

I intend to revive “separate but equal, is unequal” in other fields, such as transportation so that a person walking in a crosswalk in Staten Island is treated equally as one walking across Park Avenue in Manhattan, and the mother lode of all, in New York State Court System, to remind the State Judiciary that when they take an Oath to honor the U.S. Constitution they must honor the federal constitutional rights of litigants without issuing tyrannical orders that are a travesty of justice.

Presiding Justice Diane Renwick recently reminded the lower court of its unconstitutional behavior by setting aside a fine of over $454 Million against citizen Donald Trump as being “excessive” and in violation of the Eight Amendment’s prohibition of “excessive fines.” 

Still, today we have many unresolved issues: like birth citizenship; and lack of national uniformity for presidential elections, lack of uniformity among the states for election of senators and congress-members. But, worst of all, is the Ninth Amendment. Instead of its over-shadowing constitutional power, it has shrunk and is deeply misunderstood. Most mis-think it as a mere rule of construction; a place holder.

Others are lost in its vast embrace of history and common law, a  “black hole,” and so misunderstood, that its nearly ignored in the courts, hence, losing it’s protection of the un-enumerated constitutional rights and liberties, we have and own, as our unalienable rights. 

My contribution today in soulfully celebrating our Republic, especially today, on “America 250," has one motive, and is three-fold: 
    1. to shed light on the Bill of Rights’ “Black Hole,” the Ninth Amendment, with a simple recipe that demystifies it, honoring Justice Clarence Thomas desire to explain  “a $20 Idea in a 10 Cent Sentence,” and akin to Lincoln’s at Gettysburg; 
    2. prove that the internally contradicting “3/5th Compromise” was actually the first step towards abolition of slavery, well before Sir William Wilberforce in 1807, and hence, humanizing of slavery; and 
    3. East India Company’s role in Boston Tea Party and British India squeezed to death, after George Washington secured the Articles of Capitulation from Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown and Cornwallis was sent as Viceroy of East India Company’s “British India” where he ruled  “harshly.” 

Ninth Amendment Rights Need to Come out of the Black Hole’s Darkness.  

Shedding huge luminosity into the Black Hole and lighting it up for it’s usefulness, after mostly being asleep for 250 years, use Sir William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England” to search for all of the well-defined rights and liberties that are in the Ninth Amendment.

Blackstone’s Commentaries were published between 1765 and 1769, well before 1776 and 1791, and each of our Founders were aware of Sir Blackstone’s weighty contribution to codify stray laws and rights of citizenry. By so doing, the un-enumerated rights and liberties become enumerated, and useful to every American who wants a full measure of justice. 

The 3/5th Compromise.

The 3/5th Compromise came about to limit the number of Southern States’ members of congress. As it was population based formula. More the people, more the representatives. To end slavery,  the Abolitionist North wanted  not to count slaves as human being at all. The Slave owning Southern States wanted to count each Slave as a full human being! Had South won its demand, the Congress would be controlled by the slave-owning South.

Hence, the 60% of a person, 3/5th  compromise, was to actually the start the abolition of slavery in America. Something we can all be proud of. Therefore, Critical Race Theory, is both factually false, power-dynamic ignorant,  and inflammatory to be seditious and destructive of American unity and rightful pride. 

Every American can be proud that we struck the first blow against the trade of slaves, with the 3/5th Compromise in 1787. Slave trader John Newtown debut his “Amazing Grace” in 1773. England outlawed slavery in 1833, but invented indentured servitude, which was not much better. 

Book Ends of the American Revolution: East India Company and India.

The Boston Tea Party starred tea from East India Company in 1773, when the American Revolution started. When George Washington won at Yorktown, Lord Charles Cornwallis returned to London humiliated. Whenever a great loss occurs, those blessed by corrupt power are always rewarded with a promotion, while the rest are punished on the merits.

So, Lord Cornwallis was corruptly promoted to be East India Company’s Viceroy of India and he squeezed India to make up for the losses of revenue from the now-free and sovereign Thirteen united States of America. The history of the Empire in India only went from “bad” to “worse.”

Incredulously, or perhaps joined at the hip of history, Indians, having been unfairly subjugated by the same British Empire, just as the Irish were and love America, the 1.4B Indians celebrate American freedoms and America as their own, more than any nation or people on earth as they truly book-ended in history the start of the American Revolution in Boston and after the Capitulation on October 19, 1781 at Yorktown, they were squeezed with starvation and paying more taxes to Empire so as to cover her losses. The linkage between United States and India spans centuries, and the love of Freedom burns equally bright. 

2022 - United Nations - Honorees include former Permanent Representatives Kaha Imnadze, Georgi Panayotov, Jean Claude do Rigo, and Hon. Eliot Lance Engel, former chair, House Foreign Affairs Committee. Presiding Head of European Union Delegation, H.E. Olof Skoog. Present President of the General Assembly Csaba Korosi, and then-President of UN Security Council, H.E. Ferit Hoxha, now Foreign Minister of Albania. / Courtesy Photo

In fact, the perpetualness of the fight between Light and Darkness, as Jefferson referenced in his Tree of Liberty, is ancient as it is uniquely Indian with her own festival of Diwali. That metaphorical victory of “Light” over “Darkness” is now also a natural Thomas Jefferson American asset.

This history joinder occurred, as Ranju Batra, my wife, worked tirelessly over seven years as Chair of the Diwali Stamp Project, with lots of help from lots of good and great people, across all ethnicities, as it is what every good human being wants, and then Ranju succeeded in getting United States Postal Service to issue a Forever Diwali Stamp depicting a brightly lit Diya on October 5, 2016, as she invited others to join her in the Stamp Dedication. 

Two months later, twenty four nations at the United Nations honored her and her journey, as her process was consistent with the highest ideals of the UN Charter, and Manhattan USPS Postmaster joined.

Then, a year later in 2017, as part of Americanism’s core contribution to humanity, victory of Light over Darkness - as the Declaration of Independence actually personifies the highest of Diwali Light -  world class diplomats are annually honored at the United Nations with a USPS “Diwali Stamp - The Power of One Award.” Such that these awards have become known as the Oscars of Diplomacy, help keep Hope alive, and promote peace by enhancing the role diplomacy. 

Today, every American must declare here and now to preserve America and Americanism forever, and swear: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” 

Happy birthday America! 
Here’s to Lincoln’s prediction at Gettysburg: America1000!

The writer is a lawyer and thought leader.

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of New India Abroad.)

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