When I was a kid, I used to think of the 4th as just another reason to stay up late with my parents. It wasn’t anything REALLY special, although the parades were cool and we got to play with fireworks. I burned myself on a sparkler when I was five and left fireworks alone for about six years anyways. But although my parents treated it as a special holiday, I really didn’t get it.
Later on, when I found a fireworks stand in Idaho that sold bottle rockets, my friends and I would buy about six or seven gross of bottle rockets and have bottle rocket wars with each other. I came close to blowing myself up once or twice, but the 4th STILL wasn’t as special as Christmas or Easter. At least on those two holidays, we were allowed to get out of school for a day or two (or in the case of Easter, it fell on Spring Break).
Then, I started learning history. World History, American History, all the classes in school and other books that I picked up on my own. And THAT is when the 4th of July became special. Because the chances of this country doing what it did when it did were slim to none. And yet it still happened.
The best men that this fledgling country had to offer volunteered to be it’s leaders. I recently finished reading a book on George Washington, and the sense you get is that here was an above ordinary man who became extraordinary, all in the name of something greater than himself, that he himself might never enjoy the fruits thereof. When General Washington won the Revolutionary War, we was offered the crown of America. The CROWN. And he turned it down. He turned it down because he refused to see the dream he worked, sacrificed and suffered for rendered all for naught. ALL the leaders of the Revolution, facing trials that modern Americans cannot begin to imagine, worked to create something larger than any of them could dream. And it WORKED. This novel, unheard of system of government, based on a system two millennia old, instituted in a land still unexplored, paid for by the blood of common men and women, and it WORKED. We won this nation from the mightiest country in the world at that time. “The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire”. Remember that phrase? It was true. From India to America, Britain controlled more land and more people than any country in the world at any time, and yet the American Colonials, aided by the French, managed to win not only military victory but a new nation.
So much rested on so few, and yet they managed to succeed. And the results of their dream, which they could only imagine at the time, have risen to levels never before seen in the world.
Americans brought forth electric light, the steam engine, and powered flight. Americans have brought forth so many inventions that what was astounding now seems modern. Peanut Butter. Unheard of until a man named George Washington Carver, a black inventor looking for ways to utilize peanuts ground up several nuts for an experiment and decided they tasted pretty good that way. The Personal Computer, the very machine that I’m using to type this little piece, came about because of American ingenuity and know-how. While we might have Dell, or Intel, or Gateway, or any of the other makers of computers and computer components these days, I can remember when the letters “PC” were ALWAYS preceded by “IBM”. Radios, televisions, telephones, telegraphs, all the products of American invention or innovation. Even what we didn’t invent, we improved, and passed that knowledge onto the rest of the world. It can be reasonably argued that Americans have done more to help the world in the past two centuries than any other country.
America has welcomed people from the world over. From the first immigrants from Europe, to immigrants from Asia. They have all come because they understood what America stands for. And they still come to this very day, clamoring to be American.
We, in partnership with Great Britain, the country we once fought against, ended slavery in the Anglosphere. I can’t say that we ended it altogether, since slavery still exists in Africa and the Middle East, but we paid for the freedom of all men and women in this country with our blood. We helped save the world from itself not once but TWICE in the 20th Century. And if you count the money and blood used to fight the USSR, we would increase that number to three. And today, Americans are fighting and dying to bring freedom into a section of the world that hasn’t seen freedom in thousands of years. We are doing it for a number of reasons; to prevent state sponsored terrorism, to eliminate dangers to our country, to rid the world of parasites who do nothing but destroy everything around them. But the one reason that has always been stated, the one reason that President Bush has mentioned time and time again, no matter what the Left tries to say or do, has been freedom.
Freedom. There is so much meaning captured by that one word, and yet so many people cannot conceive in their mind exactly what it means in any way. We in this country have been blessed to grow up in a country who’s basic reason for it’s creation was FREEDOM. But that blessing is a double edged sword, because people who have never had to fight for freedom, people who have never been challenged in a real and meaningful way sometimes do not understand exactly what freedom is, or why it is so important. Just observe how many people willingly give away their freedoms to the state, either out of apathy or carelessness. We are now in a position where so many people have given away bits of their freedom to the state that the state is now demanding that we give up other freedoms as well. The list is too long to mention, but a few salient points can be made – the 2nd Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, is all but ignored in several states of the union. The 5th Amendment, which safeguards the freedom that we have to our private property, was violated by the Supreme Court in ways that would make the Founding Fathers take up arms yet again. Our freedom of speech is infringed upon on a daily basis. How many times have you heard “You can’t say that!” in today’s politically correct culture? Saying certain things can now get you tossed in jail!
The same people who give their freedoms away sneer when we mention freedom in other parts of the world, by the way. It is as if they hold freedom in contempt. Perhaps they do. Having never had their freedoms challenged, they by their actions are not free at all.
But despite the problems that face this country, we are still the best hope for freedom in the world. After observing the actions of other countries, perhaps we are the ONLY hope for freedom in this world. While other countries willingly give rights and freedoms away for a false sense of security, Americans still fight, on the battlefield and in the political chambers, to preserve the freedoms that we hold dear. We do it because of the country that we believe in, the country that embodies the freedoms that we have sacrificed for. We do it for THIS COUNTRY, born out of turmoil and bloodshed, an experiment still in the making, that was created on the Fourth of July.
The Fourth of July, in a way, embodies all the beliefs we hold. Duty. Doing what is right, because it is right. Loyalty to the things that support and protect us, instead of misplaced servitude to that which would destroy us. And most of all, Freedom. The freedom that has allowed us to do great things, and that allows us to be who we are. The freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, the freedom to assemble and the freedom to petition. The freedom that has created a country unlike any other in the world. It is THAT which is celebrated on the Fourth of July, as well as all the accomplishments of a country that almost didn’t exist.
I want all of you to think about the gifts that you have, all the freedoms you enjoy, and think about whether or not you would have them if you lived anywhere else in the world.
And then celebrate the Fourth of July with me.
