wellspring/00-declaration-of-individual-sovereignty.md

The unanimous declaration of all rational individuals:

As the founders of the Forerunning republic said, "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Reason entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Existence exists and the act of grasping this implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness to perceive it. These two -- existence and consciousness -- are axioms humankind cannot escape; these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action one undertakes, in any part of one's knowledge. Whatever one knows, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it. Moreover, to be is to be something, of a definite nature -- all existents are identities.

We who are present here, hold these axioms to be self-evident and self-reaffirming: that Existence is Identity and Consciousness is Identification.

We hold that humankind are rational creatures possessing rational consciousness which is their only tool of survival and that to hamper a rational creature's mind is to hamper its ability to live and flourish - thus a man's right to life is his right to the unhampered use of his rational faculty in the pursuit of his life and flourishing.

We hold that to secure this right to life means to secure it against the predations of other rational creatures who wish to survive as brutes who extort others rather than as rational individuals who think and produce; that governments are instituted among men to enforce this necessary security against predatory men; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is implied by the right of rational creatures to their own lives, that they may alter or abolish such government, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to enforce this right to rational life to the end that they may pursue their happiness.

We lay these charges against {_hostile government/political status quo/ruling entity_}, that it has set itself up to be an enemy of the right of rational creatures to pursue their lives by reason, subjecting said rational creatures to a life lower than the rational -- to a life lower than human. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:

{_Show cause by enumeration of facts_}

In every stage of these Oppressions We 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.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the sovereign right of rational creatures to life qua rational being, embodied in the form of {_name your political entity_} in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the final jurisdiction of reason for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the Law of Identity and of our right to life, solemnly publish and declare, That {_name your political entity_} is, and by right ought to be, Free and Independent; that it is Absolved from all Allegiance to {_hostile entity_}, and that all political connection between them and the {hostile entity}, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that being Free and Independent, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the final jurisdiction of reason, we mutually stand together in this cause, staking our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.