by Thomas Purcell

Created on: January 06, 2011   Last Updated: January 09, 2011

Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano was in Brussels in January, 2010, on a week long worldwide trip on security; discussing better ways to investigate and enforce new laws and regulations governing the use of chemicals and everyday solvents in the United States. 

Someone should inform Ms. Napolitano, that our country, and its foundations in freedom of thought and liberty, is not a nation that has as its core a set of laws based in fear. 

In 1776, our founder fathers had a vision of what America should be, and defined it in a document known as the Declaration of Independence, and then again in 1787 set it down in a set of concrete rules of governance, to define what is was, which came to be known as The Constitution. The documents are unique for a variety of reasons both what is parallel about both documents, and the mindset of the men that wrote them, is that it limited what government can do, or has the right to to do. 

One of the most startling phrases for the Declaration is the following: 

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. 

What is startling about this, is the functional point that ALL men were created equal, and in stating that in a legal document, it became a resounding rebuke to those who believed that monarchical rule was only functional possibility for a form of government. It viewed that no person (men) were superior to another, either by birth, heritage or education or background. 

This was further emphasized in the Constitution by spelling out limited and specific guidelines on how a government was run. It based its legal authority not in a divine right of kings, but inherent in every man as being equal.

The authorship of such documents was, of course, revolutionary (pardon the pun) not only from an historical point of view, but also from a philosophical one. Christianity had always had this fundamental value at its roots, but never before had a secular document established it as a form of government. As a result, the men that authored the document, and its signers, were marked for death by the Crown of England as revolutionaries and rebels. Most of the signers of the document came to bad ends as a result. 

Of the 56 signers of the document; although 22 were lawyers by trade, 14 were simple farmers who were landowners in

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