Editorial - On July 4th Remember The Revolutionaries

July 4th is the day we celebrate the resolve of those who signed the Declaration of Independence.  The men who signed the document were bold in their ideas and in their willingness to identify themselves.  Affixing their signatures prominently on the Declaration of Independence was dangerous and placed them at risk. These men were leaders. Those who supported independence from England were called patriots,  rebels, congressmen, whigs and finally Americans. 

The government they created, under the Articles of Confederation of States proved to be ineffective and so they went back to the drawing board. Our Constitution reflects their wisdom, insightfulness and ability to compromise. Their actions were revolutionary and so was the government they created.

On July 4th let us celebrate the small group of patriots who changed the world.

Pat

Comments

[To Pat B & Maureen Creighton, I mean Maureen Rossi]

This article is about the malicious statement. For the 2009 film, see Defamation (film).
"Libel" and "Slander" redirect here. For other uses, see Libel (disambiguation) and Slander (disambiguation).
"Vilification" and "Calumny" redirect here. For the hate crime, see racial vilification. For the Catholic sin, see detraction.
For the Wikipedia policy, see Wikipedia:Libel.

Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, or traducement—is the communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation. Most jurisdictions allow legal action to deter various kinds of defamation and retaliate against groundless criticism.

Under common law, to constitute defamation, a claim must generally be false and have been made to someone other than the person defamed.[1] Some common law jurisdictions also distinguish between spoken defamation, called slander, and defamation in other media such as printed words or images, called libel.[2]

False light laws protect against statements which are not technically false but misleading.[3]

In some civil law jurisdictions, defamation is treated as a crime rather than a civil wrong.[4] The United Nations Commission on Human Rights ruled in 2012 that the criminalization of libel violates freedom of expression and is inconsistent with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.[5]