(LifeSiteNews) — “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another … a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
So begins the American Declaration of Independence, adopted in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations,” the document continues, “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.”
The Declaration then lists 27 specific grievances against King George III, concluding that the British monarch “is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” As a parlor game for this year’s Independence Day, best played while sitting around the backyard barbecue, it is possible to brainstorm a hit parade of grievances that many Americans today are nursing against U.S. President Joe Biden.
For starters, President Biden improperly influenced the November 2020 election that brought him to power by orchestrating efforts to discredit New York Post reporting about his son Hunter’s laptop computer. At the behest of senior Biden campaign official Antony Blinken, now U.S. secretary of state, 51 former national security officials penned a public letter in October 2020 claiming the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Candidate Biden brandished the letter in his final debate with President Donald Trump, calling Trump’s charges about the laptop “a bunch of garbage!” The contents of the laptop turned out to be authentic, leading to a sweetheart deal with prosecutors last month in which Hunter Biden pled guilty to two misdemeanor charges of tax evasion and will be able to favorably resolve a felony gun charge.
Laptopgate, however, has raised stubborn questions about the millions of dollars that Joe Biden’s family received from overseas companies when he was vice president, some of them linked to foreign governments. Congressional investigators are now digging deeply into allegations of influence peddling and unjust enrichment amid reports from a credible intelligence source that Biden himself received $5 million from a Ukrainian energy company.
Two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers told a congressional committee in June that the IRS, the Department of Justice, and the FBI interfered with the Hunter Biden investigation. The claims underscored perceptions of a two-tiered federal justice system that favors liberals and disfavors conservatives while relying on a fourth “intelligence branch” of government to snoop on the Biden administration’s political detractors.
Most striking has been the weaponization of the FBI, which under Biden has targeted pro-lifers and Catholics who embrace the Traditional Latin Mass while largely ignoring the hundreds of violent attacks on Catholic churches and pro-life pregnancy centers since 2020. The FBI in an internal memo leaked earlier this year urged investigations of “radical-traditionalist” Catholics due to possible ties to “the far-right white nationalist movement.”
The FBI has similarly targeted groups like Moms For Liberty and Parents Defending Education for voicing opposition at local school board meetings to Covid-19 measures, the teaching of critical race theory, and library books promoting sexual deviancy.
Biden, who calls himself a “devout Catholic,” has aggressively promoted policies that contradict Church teaching on abortion, same-sex “marriage,” and transgenderism. He has shifted from opposing gay “marriage” in 2008 to approving the use of tax dollars by dozens of federal agencies to celebrate Pride Month in June.
The president has energetically advocated “gender-affirming care” for children with gender dysphoria, calling state laws banning the chemical and surgical “transitioning” of minors “close to sinful.” Biden proclaimed last March 30 to be “Transgender Day of Visibility,” and his State Department is pushing the full Pride agenda abroad.
Radical gender ideology has infiltrated every corner of Biden’s bureaucracy. The Department of Education proposed a new Title IX rule in April that would decimate school athletics by normalizing participation by biological males in female sports, including the sharing of locker rooms and showers. The rule would supersede laws passed by many states to preserve female sports and protect female athletes.
The Department of Defense already mandates that military service members be quartered, with restroom and shower privileges, according to their gender identities. The Navy recently tapped a TikTok drag queen influencer, who is also an active duty sailor, in a bid to boost flagging recruitment. While Biden’s military gets top marks for wokeness, it failed to protect American air space from a Chinese spy balloon earlier this year, a dereliction of duty by the commander in chief.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in its Dobbs decision in June 2022, struck down the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 and returned the power to regulate abortion to individual states. Biden as a young senator in 1982 had himself voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, but he responded to the Dobbs ruling by committing maximum federal resources to ensuring that abortion on demand remains available nationwide. He marked the anniversary last month with an executive order expanding access to contraceptives and abortifacient drugs.
The Food and Drug Administration since Dobbs has made abortion pills available via mail order and pickup at retail pharmacies. Telemedicine prescriptions are now sufficient under FDA rules, whereas an in-person consultation with a doctor was previously required. Biden has also urged Congress to codify the right to an abortion in federal law, which would nullify abortion restrictions enacted by roughly half of the states over the past year.
Other grievances against King George’s doppelganger could include Biden’s encouragement of illegal immigration through an open border with Mexico. Or his flooding of the federal bench with unqualified judges nominated mainly for their far-left politics. Or the record inflation and gas prices that have resulted from policy choices. Or the Respect for Marriage Act that forced all states to accept same-sex “marriage” and the proposed Equality Act that would disempower women. Or even the silly things like replacing “mothers” with “birthing people” in government documents.
This Fourth of July we are not on the brink of war, as Great Britain and its American colonies were 247 years ago. Yet there are parallels between British oppression in the 1770s and deepening tensions between state governments and Washington, D.C., typically involving cultural and moral issues.
Charles Carroll of Maryland was the only Catholic among the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, as anti-Catholicism was widespread during the colonial era and would remain so through much of the nation’s history. The majority of other signers were Protestant Christians, like the colonists as a whole, though some were influenced by Deism.
Most signers of a future Declaration 2.0 might be Catholics because many of King Joe’s unjust acts represent attacks on traditional Christianity. Now, however, the hot dogs are ready and it’s time to say grace — including thanks that we still live in a free USA.
William Underwood, Ph.D., is a writer living in California.