Who Stole the United States?

I'm not sure where this came from - a friend (okay, my Mom) posted the video to my facebook wall. I like it.  This band seems to really mean what they are singing about.

Post by Willis McCoy.

I know there are other people out there who are wondering who stole our country, and where have they taken it?  The United States of America that I grew up pledging allegiance to has morphed into something else, it seems.

I am not sure what to do about it, though I have a few ideas.  And I don't know what else to say, so I'm going to copy here the beginning of the Declaration of Independence.  This is the document that was sent to England, all those many years ago, by a group of people who wanted to live in a free country.  They wanted the freedom to make their own laws and to live in the way they chose.

The Declaration of Independence

July 4, 1776

...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.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, 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, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness...

I wonder if we are not in the same position these brave men were in? But instead of leaving a country, we need to take one back.

Years later (four score and seven, actually), the country was embroiled in a war against itself.  People on both sides of the argument fought for the country they wanted.  And a great president stood on the sight of a bloody battle to dedicate it.  And in the Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln hearkened back to those men who made America what it was, encouraging the people that the United States would always be the free land it was meant to be.

The Gettysburg Address

November 19, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure...

...we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Can we still say this?  Are we really a government of the people, by the people, and for the people?  And are we a nation under God?  I wonder.  How far have we gone from the high ideals of this nation's beginning?  And how are we to get back?