To research my book ‘Me the People’ – in which I have rewritten the entire Constitution of the United States – I flew to Greece, the birthplace of democracy. I bused to Philly, the home of independence. I even, if you can believe it, read the Constitution of the United States.
Education in India has made monumental progress since Independence but continues to face daunting challenges at multiple levels, particularly in terms of quality, infrastructure and dropout rates. We have islands of excellence floating in a sea of mediocrity.
My parents were concerned that I would not get good schooling, so they put me up in my uncle’s house in Dharwad, and I spent about six years there. So at a very young age, I was away from my parents. I developed an amount of independence and learned to stand on my own feet.
Americans are good with to-do lists; just tell us what to do, and we’ll do it. Throughout our history, we have proven that. Colonize. Check. Win our independence. Check. Form a union. Check. Expand to the Pacific. Check. Settle the West. Check. Keep the Union together. Check. Industrialize. Check. Fight the Nazis. Check.
Harry Truman, who was a Bible-believing Christian Zionist, defied the secretary of state he so admired, George C. Marshall, and won a place in Israel’s history by recognizing the new state 11 minutes after it declared its independence in 1948.
As long as the United States – and the world – gets its oil from the Middle East, we will be drawn into the endless crises that seem endemic to the region. American energy independence would not only liberate us, it would also drive down the worldwide price of oil.
India is known for much development that has happened since our independence, but at the same time, we have also failed on many levels. It is the responsibility of the future generation to ensure that all these failures are corrected and help create a civilised society with equal opportunities for one and all.
‘Chocolat’ was a sort of statement of my own childhood, recognizing I experienced something from the end of the colonial era and the beginning of independence as I was a child that really made me aware of things I never forgot – a sort of childhood that made me different when I was a student in France.
The way I was grew up gave me a slight fearlessness and a sense of independence. There are things about it that have definitely informed me. And then, as a parent, it’s done the opposite. It’s made me feel much more protective. There are boundaries in my kids’ lives that I don’t think I had.
National independence, and the preceding political struggles, helped create the space for literary creation in many post-colonial countries. Much of modern Indian or Chinese literature is inconceivable without the political movement for freedom from foreign rule.
Scotland is the only case in the world where the poor part of a territory wants to separate from the rich part. If independence came, one option is to keep the pound as its currency, so that all economic decisions will continue to be taken by the Bank of England.
I will say that anyone who supports Scottish independence should go to Athens. Because nothing works. It is a disaster. It is a ruined, dirty place where people do not have money or future prospects. The day one after independence, Scotland would be worse.
An independent state does not pay too dear a price for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures for it peace with its neighbours.
The freedom fighters in India’s long struggle for independence from British rule, or members of the African National Congress, were once classed as terrorists. History, as they say, is written by victors, but history also has many cunning corridors – how much time must elapse before all those tricky side-passages are revealed?
Happy for America, happy for Europe, perhaps for the world when, on the delivery of Cornwallis’s sword to the illustrious, the immortal Washington, or rather by his order, to the brave Lincoln, the sun of Liberty and Independence burst through a sable cloud, and his benign influence was, almost instantaneously, felt in our remotest corners!
Only children are weird. The only children I know, including myself, are either superweird or very talented and special or a mix of the two. I think there was always a certain independence and loneliness – I had a lot of imaginary friends as a kid.
The United States is truly remarkable, a nation founded on a set of Enlightenment ideals so beautifully expressed by the Declaration of Independence and codified in the U.S. Constitution. We should feel good about our ideals, even when we don’t quite manage to live up to them.
Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing. And Egypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.
In 1787, many Americans were convinced that the ‘perpetual union’ they had created in winning independence was collapsing. Six years earlier, in the Articles of Confederation, the thirteen state governments had surrendered extensive powers to a congress of delegates from each state legislature.
Thomas Paine, so celebrated and so despised as he traveled through the critical events of his time, has long appealed to biographers. Paine was present at the creation both of the United States and of the French Republic. His eloquence, in the pamphlet ‘Common Sense,’ propelled the American colonists toward independence.
Come November, the American people will have the chance to re-declare their independence. Americans will have a chance to vote for trade, immigration and foreign policies that put our citizens first. They will have the chance to reject today’s rule by the global elite, and to embrace real change that delivers a government of, by and for the people.
I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that’s ever lived. He lived in the 18th century; as you all know, he was an Englishman who was involved in the writing of American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, the French Constitution, wrote the great book called ‘The Rights of Man’ – commercial over.
Senator Udall focused his entire campaign as a social-issues warrior, and that was rejected by the people of Colorado, who embraced our plan of creating jobs and opportunity, growing energy independence, looking at education opportunities for the future, and making sure we’re focused on protecting this great Colorado environment.
I am convinced that the Obama administration and Clinton Dynasty would rather hail the Communist Manifesto than the Declaration of Independence this Fourth of July. And there’s more than enough proof to show how they have been slow-cooking our Founders’ republic into a red-star state like China.
There’s very little proof that Obama or anyone in his administration – particularly Hillary Clinton – truly understands or believes the tenets in the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. If they did, they would know that they are running a federal government in direct contradiction to both of those sacred documents.
