When Thomas Jefferson sharpened his quill and began drafting the Declaration of Independence, he wasn’t simply writing lofty poetry about liberty and equality. He was building a case—an indictment of King George III and the British system that treated the American colonies less like partners and more like neglected stepchildren. Jefferson’s soaring words about natural rights tend to get all the glory, but two-thirds of the document is grievances. Cold, hard accusations. Facts submitted, as Jefferson put it, to a candid world.
In this week’s edition of Dave Does History on Bill Mick Live, we kicked off the list of those grievances with the very first one: “He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” It doesn’t sound as dramatic as British troops quartered in your home or cannon fire raining down on your city, but Jefferson knew what he was doing. At its heart, this was about the colonists’ right to govern themselves, to pass laws that fit their needs, only to see them delayed, vetoed, or left to rot on a desk in London.
The British government called it prerogative. The colonists called it tyranny. Imagine trying to repair a road, fund a school, or regulate land sales, only to be told that your bill would sit in a drawer for years—if it was ever acknowledged at all. Neglect, Jefferson argued, can be just as destructive as outright denial.
Sound familiar? It should. On the show, we drew direct lines from 1776 to today, where Americans still grapple with an unresponsive government. How many times have we seen bills debated, even passed, only to vanish in the swamp of gridlock? Immigration reform, infrastructure, judicial appointments—you name it, the neglect echoes Jefferson’s words. The frustration felt by colonists who believed their “wholesome and necessary” laws were ignored isn’t so different from the frustration we feel today.
Jefferson’s point was simple but profound: when government refuses to act on the needs of its people, it ceases to serve them. James Madison would later warn in Federalist 57 that if government ever became unresponsive, the fault would not lie solely with Congress, but with the people themselves—if they allowed the “spirit of liberty” to be debased.
That’s the lesson we wrestled with on Bill Mick Live. The grievances of 1776 aren’t just relics; they’re warnings. The question is whether we’ve kept that spirit of liberty alive—or if we’ve grown too willing to tolerate neglect from those we entrust with power.
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