The painting above is Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze.My thoughts on Independence Day from previous years are here.
Looking back on my posts from Fourth of July of ye olden days, I think that I tend to get a little too misty eyed and philosophical. But on the other hand, as a student of history its hard not to. There has never really been in the history of the world an experiment like the one that the Founding Fathers of America began when they worked to create the United States of America. For all the talk about republics and democracies of Greece and Rome, the ideas that were set out in the American Revolution were completely revolutionary. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This seems like an obvious idea to us today but we are the benefactors of the blood and toil of previous generations who fought and died to make these ideas the foundation of our lives. Never in the sewer that is most of human history has the idea been self-evident that all men are created equal or that they have unalienable rights to anything like life and liberty, not to mention the pursuit of happiness! It used to be that you were the property of a king or noble, you lived and died at his command and you pursued what he or the city-state or the tribe you lived in desired.
The news these days isn't exactly great both on the economic front and on the political front. Unemployment is up. The government is meddling in things it shouldn't have any business putting its fingers into and is enslaving future generations to a mountain of debt while simultaneously bleeding the treasury dry. Abroad tyrants and despots gain and consolidate power while seeking weapons of annihilation to threaten free nations. Brave nations such as Honduras are trying to stay true to their laws against the pressure of despots and popular fools who cravenly bow to them; Israel continues to try to keep its head afloat as a free nation living in a horrible neighborhood despite the pressure of a hostile world to make it try to lay down and die. Politics has become a poison to everything it touches and politicians like the clown Minnesota just put in the senate or the weirdo governor of South Carolina have become a public spectacle, a Hollywood for extremely ugly people. It has gotten to the point that normal people who attempt to enter the ring of national politics are basically stoned to political death by a hostile elitist media and existing political establishment who have given up all pretenses of impartiality and are basically whoring themselves to their favored candidate.and political party. In other words, the situation today doesn't look particularly good. But there is one thing that we remind ourselves every Fourth of July that can give us hope.
See, despite the situation right now, we still have the ideas of the Revolution. No matter what politicians say and no matter how hard they try to rob the ordinary people of this country with their lust for power and personal aggrandizement, we still have the ideas that men like Washington and Jefferson suffered for. Remember that we have unalienable rights including but not limited to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Its true that we must in every generation fight for our right to these rights but before you can fight, you have to remember. This is the treasure we have been given by past generations and this is what the Fourth of July is all about - not just a good BBQ :-), but remembering the ideals of the Revolution so that they don't just fade away quietly.
Happy Fourth of July!
