Jefferson’s document has inspired similar declarations by France, Israel, Haiti, Mexico, Venezuela, Kosovo, Chile, Liberia and Vietnam. Maybe it’s time we took it back. The majority of the 1776 document is taken up by grievances justifying revolution against tyranny. Here are some examples:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has instead advocated laws that endanger the health and safety of the public.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has interfered in the jurisdiction of his Governors in matters of maintain domestic peace, substituting, against their will, armed Guardsmen in the place of local police.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has advocated punitive measures against large states whose votes he could not win, has harassed them with lawsuits, has withheld public funds that were their due.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has set capricious deadlines for the passage of a voluminous, arcane and deceitful bill, fatiguing Senators into compliance with its passage.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has erected walls and let loose secret police forces on foreigners whom he refuses to naturalize, notwithstanding their proven benefit to the economies of the states and the capitalists therein.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has subjected the judiciary to denigration and harassment, even to veiled threats of harm, in an effort to discredit them in the eyes of the people.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has subjected judges and legislators who defy his Will to arrest and public humiliation.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has used ICE  and DOGE to intimidate both the people he is sworn to govern and to punish those who serve the government with faith and diligence.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has mobilized state militia and Standing Armies—the Marine Corps– given them no clear mission and deployed them, at great public expense, without the Consent of state and municipal authorities.

He has effected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has subverted the authority of the Los Angeles Police Department, a civil agency, with armed militia and Marines

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For quartering armed troops in civic buildings maintained by states and/or municipalities; they are subjected to primitive and debilitating conditions therein.

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing capricious and nonsensical tariffs on foreign trade partners in the naïve belief and the constant assertion that it is foreigners who will actually pay those duties.

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

And for relieving the wealthiest among us of their share of the burden of Taxes.

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For the increasing use of arbitrary arrest and secret confinement, practices which subvert the tradition of Due Process of Law.

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For rewarding, from the Public Treasury, foreign dictators who incarcerate, without trial, those accused of pretended offenses.

In every stage of these Oppressions We [through our elected representative and through civic gatherings] have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.