There seems to be an increasingly accepted view in America that the 'founding words' of our esteemed Founders (women most certainly included) are some sort of 'ideal' to be striven for.

Nothing could be further from the truth -- the Declaration, Constitution, et. al. are practical recipes, written by experienced and reflective authors, a group of people that had personally suffered and/or witnessed the murders, intrusions, seizures, violations, wrongs, indignities and humiliations the Documents are meant prevent. This most certainly includes the right to keep private from the "state" communications between individuals.

(Just who the fuck does this current government think they are, anyway? They were too cowardly to go to the original site for their own first "inauguration" (thats another story) because of the protesters, and its been all downhill since that day. They haven't looked a protester in the eyes since, the gutless wonders, instead they spend mass quantities of cash avoiding them and locking them out of public forums. Heaven forbid that they actually tried to match wits with one.)

I also find the political (for lack of a better word) similarities between then and now ironic, to say the least. The American Revolution was pretty much entirely caused by years of increasing economic and physical depredation, abuse and exploitation by the dominant trans-national "entity" of the day, the British East India Company, an entity that at times employed its own military force, established its own governments, etc.

Although schoolchildren are usually taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against "taxation without representation," akin to modern day conservative taxpayer revolts, in fact what led to the revolution was rage against a transnational corporation that, by the 1760s, dominated trade from China to India to the Caribbean, and controlled nearly all commerce to and from North America, with subsidies and special dispensation from the British crown. Hewes notes: "The [East India] Company received permission to transport tea, free of all duty, from Great Britain to America..." allowing it to wipe out New England-based tea wholesalers and mom-and-pop stores and take over the tea business in all of America. (British East India Company, wikipedia.org).

Sound anything like whats happening with the oil in Iraq?

But actually, my favorite part is that smugglers played such a large part in early American history. Dunno why, but that appeals to me sooooooo much. :)

Interesting, too, that lobbyists played a part in the run up to the American Revolution:

The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 angered colonists regarding British decisions on taxing the colonies despite a lack of representation in the Westminster Parliament. One of the protesters was John Hancock. In 1768, Hancock's ship Liberty was seized by customs officials, and he was charged with smuggling. He was defended by John Adams, and the charges were eventually dropped. However, Hancock later faced several hundred more indictments.

Hancock organized a boycott of tea from China sold by the British East India Company, whose sales in the colonies then fell from 320,000 pounds (145,000 kg) to 520 pounds (240 kg). By 1773, the company had large debts, huge stocks of tea in its warehouses and no prospect of selling it because smugglers, such as Hancock, were importing tea without paying import taxes. The British government passed the Tea Act, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea to the colonies directly and without "payment of any customs or duties whatsoever" in Britain, instead paying the much lower American duty. This tax break allowed the East India Company to sell for lower prices than those offered by the colonial merchants and smugglers.

American colonists, particularly the wealthy smugglers, resented this favored treatment of a major company, which employed lobbyists and wielded great influence in Parliament. Protests resulted in both Philadelphia and New York, but it was those in Boston that made their mark in history. Still reeling from the Hutchinson letters, Bostonians suspected the removal of the Tea Tax was simply another attempt by the British parliament to squash American freedom. Samuel Adams, wealthy smugglers, and others who had profited from the smuggled tea called for agents and consignees of the East India Company tea to abandon their positions; consignees who hesitated were terrorized through attacks on their warehouses and even their homes. (Boston Tea Party, wikipedia.org)