The Ultimate Breakup Letter

American Documents: The Declaration of Independence

2026 is America’s 250th birthyear. To celebrate, I’m highlighting 50+ significant American documents from our history. So far I have covered The Mayflower Compact, Patrick Henry’s Speech, and The Lee Resolution.

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“You Suck, Here’s Why.”

Chances are that you haven’t read the text of the Declaration in its entirety. I’m not judging you, I hadn’t either until I really set out to study American documents on my own. (I read it years ago.) Here’s a video with a somewhat dramatic reading of the text.

It’s a beautiful piece of legal poetry. To sum it up in the parlance of today, fifty-six men got together and said “We’re not British anymore, the king treats us like crap, we’ve got receipts, now we’re gonna have our own country with blackjack (free speech) and hookers (guns).”

And then they listed the aforementioned receipts.

—King George wouldn’t let colonial governors pass laws without his permission, even laws they needed.

—Colonial legislatures were summoned into assembly in weird places and at weird hours so they’d be too tired to argue with him, and would just do whatever he said.

—Other times he’d straight up dissolve representative bodies so they wouldn’t exist in any legal sense, so he didn’t have to listen to his subjects.

—Then he wouldn’t let new representative bodies be called. No government for you!

—He wouldn’t let the residents of the colonies expand or bring in new members if they wanted to.

—All that effery with colonial Congress? He did the same crap to their courts.

—Judges basically had to do what George told them.

—If he needed a new political officer, he’d create the office, give them power, and send them into the colonies to carry out his will.

—Standing armies were kept in the middle of all this to force the colonists to obey. They’d even have to quarter the troops.

—Effectively the people were under military rule and monarchical tyranny.

—When the colonists proved too durable for these abuses, he also choked their markets, pitted them against each other, or even stoked the Indians into fighting the colonists, and the Indians didn’t bother with the same ROE as the colonists. They’d go for women and children as it suited them.

All of these offenses compounded together to create an irrefutable and ironclad case for separation. The Declaration just made it official as far as the law goes.

Now began the hard physical work of actually enforcing it. Because as it goes with all laws, they don’t matter if someone else has the physical force to overpower you and subjugate you to their will.

Which was what George had been doing this whole time.

Go read the Declaration of Independence. Or listen to it in the above video. Or watch National Treasure. Or watch Jake The Lawyer’s video on it.

For extra credit, watch my video about the signers of the Declaration.

And remember: America rocks.