"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to
take it all away"  -  Barry Goldwater


DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
In /Proverbs October 26, 1994

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen Midnight Blue Personalities of The
Cutting Edge

   When in the course of telecommunication events, it becomes necessary for
one people to dissolve the electronic bands which have connected them with
another, and to assume among the powers of the electrosphere, the separate
and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle
them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

   We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all users are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Sysop with certain unalienable rights; that
among these are logons, forums, and the pursuit of studliness; that, to
secure these rights, Admin are instituted among users, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the wired; that whenever any form of Admin becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the users to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Admin, 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 studliness. Prudence, indeed, will
dictate that Admins long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that users (Jik
especially) more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a
long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right,
it is their duty, to throw off such Admin, and to provide new guards for
their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these forum
ops; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their
former systems of Admin.  The history of the present CoSysop of TCE! is  a
history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny over these forums. To prove this, let
facts be submitted to a candid world.

   He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for
the public good.

   He has forbidden his forum ops to pass laws of immediate and pressing
importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be
obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

   He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts
of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation
in the Admin, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

   He has posted user E-mail to places unusual uncomfortable, and distant
from the depository of the public forums, for the sole purpose of fatiguing
them into compliance with his measures.

   He has forwarded representative messages repeatedly, for opposing, with
manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

   He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others
to be elected; whereby the Admin powers, incapable of annihilation, have
returned to the people at large for their exercise; the board remaining, in
the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and
convulsions within.

   He has endeavored to prevent the posting base of these forums; for that
purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of new users; refusing to
pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions
of new appropriations of forums.

  He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to
laws for establishing judiciary powers.

  He has made Admin dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their
offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

  He has erected a multitude of new forums, and sent hither swarms of E-mails
to harass our people and eat out their substance.

  He has kept among us, in times of peace, CoSysop powers, without the
consent of our forum-ops.

  He has affected to render the Admin independent of, and superior to, the
civil power.

  He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our
Board Policy and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts
of pretended legislation:

   For quartering large bodies of capture files among us;

   For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any suspensions 
      which they should commit on the inhabitants of these forums;    
   For cutting off our access with all parts of the Internet;
   For imposing credit charges on us without our consent;
   For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;    
   For transporting us beyond TCE, to be tried for pretended offenses;   
   For abolishing the free system of BBS laws in a neighboring board,
establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries,
so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the
same absolute rule into these forums;
   For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and
altering fundamentally the forms of our Admin;    
For suspending our own forum-ops, and declaring themselves invested      with
power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

  He has abdicated Admin powers here, by declaring us out of his protection
and waging war against us.

  He has plundered our files, ravaged our forums, flamed our posts, and
destroyed the lives of our users.

  He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to
complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with
circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most
barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.  Okay,
maybe he isn't, but it's not beyond him.

  He has constrained our fellow users, taken captive on the Teleconference,
to bear arms against their board, to become the executioners of their friends
and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

  He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring
on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Juve savages, whose known
rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and
conditions.

  In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the
most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated
injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may
define a tyrant, is unfit to be the Administrator of a free userbase.

   Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our Admin brethren. We have
warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend
an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the
circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to
their native justice and magnanimity; and we have conjured them, by the ties
of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably
interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too, have been deaf to the
voice of justice and of consanguinity.  We must, therefore, acquiesce in the
necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them as we hold the rest
of users, enemies in war, in peace friends.

  We, therefore, the representatives of the United Minight Blue Personalities
of TCE!, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the
world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the
authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare,
That these United Forums are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT
FORUMS; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the Admin crown and
that all political connection between them and the users of Admin is, and
ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent forums,
they have full power to levy credit charges, conclude peace, contract
alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which
independent forums may of right do.  And for the support of this declaration,
with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually
pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

[Signed by]                                     DODGER [President]         
            [and fifty-five other personalities]