Thomas Jefferson died 184 years ago today

This country was started by a bunch of revolutionaries who fought against the oppression of a tyrannical government. King George was a king, so what he declared was the law. No one voted. No one was represented. There was no discussion or dissent. It was like the Executive Orders that we have today.

You probably don’t care about politics, because as long as you can get along in your everyday life, without too much hassle, too much pain, you’re cool with that. You can’t be fighting over the small injustices in life. You need to pick your battles.

Our founding fathers picked their battle. It cost some of them their lives and their fortunes. Some lost their homes and their families. They were fighting in a typical “good vs. evil” fight. It was clear the government was unfair, oppressive, and ruthless, so they fought against it and started their own government, with a new set of rules.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:

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.

The structure of our constitution, with a non-centralized government, with checks and balances, where no one branch had more power than any other, was a direct reaction to King George’s oppression. They wanted to make sure that each individual had freedom. They saw that one central government would always take more and more power, until it had total control over the people.

Thomas Jefferson said that each individual had rights, granted by God. These rights were not the result of Congress voting, or any other organization granting these rights. They are unalienable. That means God gave them to you, so they can’t be taken away from you. If any government tries to take these rights away from you, you have the right to overthrow that government.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.

I want to draw the distinction between individual rights and group rights. He said that each individual had individual rights. He didn’t say that gays have rights, or Christians have rights, or Jews have rights, or women have rights. Each person is equal under the law and everyone has the same rights. These rights don’t include the right to health care, the right to shelter, or the right to succeed.

You only have the right to try, the right to pursue. You have the right to live. You have the right to be free and make your own choices. You have the right to fail. You have the opportunity to pursue whatever you want to pursue.

I’d like to call up a protest against our current government growing too big and reaching too far into our personal freedoms, but I’m not going to. I’m not ready to pick that battle quite yet.

I AM going to call upon YOU to do the most patriotic thing that you can do this 4th of July. I want you to live. I want you to be free. I want you to pursue your happiness.

I want you to do business. I want to you to run your own business and make money. Use your freedom while you still have it, before the government declares that your business is not in the best interests of the country and bans it.

It may sound funny that people have fought and died for your right to sell jewelry on Etsy or to sell oil pumps to garages, or doors, or real estate, but they did.

This is still the land of the free and the home of the brave, so you need to go out there and be brave.

Sell something today, just because you can.