I'll bet that when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence back on July 2nd, 1776, they never thought that people would celebrate that event on the Fourth of July instead.
In all seriousness........
Go hug your family. Enjoy the day. Watch fireworks. Eat lots of food and drink lots of whatever your favorite beverage is.
And then tomorrow wake up and start fighting for your independence all over again.
A gift for a fellow patriot:
ReplyDeleteIn establishing the framework of this new country, a bold experiment in empowerment of the individual, our founding fathers explicitly sought to restrain and constrain the government. Those restrictions of power, our Bill of Rights, were the key to delegates signing the Constitution, their horrific memories still fresh from having thrown off the yoke of oppressive, intrusive overlords intent on taxing and controlling the people for "the greater good."
My friends, the experiment has gone horribly wrong. The 9th and 10th amendments were long ago shoved down the outhouse hole as detritus on a corncob. The 1st amendment has been relegated to a political football, whereby religious freedom has been perverted into freedom from exposure to citizens' public practice of religion, speech codes have become de rigueur at public institutions of learning, the press have become an administration's attack dog, and freedom-loving Americans, including those returning from putting their lives on the line for this country, have been declared enemies. The 2nd amendment has quite simply been truncated, its original intent of citizens standing up against foreign and governmental destruction of a free state to meaning nothing more than having toys for sport. The 4th amendment is a joke, with the government deciding it was already so easy to get a warrant at any time for the most trivial of reasons, it was more expedient just to barge in at will. Sure, there are fragments of some of the first 10 amendments still in practice, but the Bill of Rights wasn't approved piecemeal and the steady erosion makes it clear that freedom has lost to central authority.
This July 4th, I implore you to read the Declaration of Independence, then think long and hard about this country and its current condition. I demand every citizen thoroughly read the Constitution to understand that this country's greatness and success have been accomplished by restricting government and freeing the individual. I beg my fellow citizens to recognize the elements of oppression, then stand up and fight. Fight at public meetings. Fight at the ballot box. Fight with your pocketbooks. Fight with all the vigor you can muster as free, thinking individuals, because if you don't, the only fight remaining will be in the realm of sporting toys and none of us wants the last battle for freedom to be waged there.