Shots Across The Bow

Independence Day: The Day After

Yesterday, our nation celebrated its 231st birthday. One of the things I find significant about July 4th is that we set the birth of America not from the day the British surrendered at Yorktown, but from the day some very wise and brave men sat down and signed their name to a document, making a public proclamation that Americans were no longer subject to foreign rule, and swearing a public oath to defend our God given freedoms with their lives, fortunes,and their sacred honor. We recognized that our nation is founded not on the strength of our military success but on the strength of our ideas. It's too bad that most of those ideas have fallen into disrepute in today's America.

Some of my friends on the left spent yesterday sharing their thoughts on America, and I was so impressed with their perspectives that I thought I'd share them with you.

• Brian Arner gives us a portrait of a real American hero. No silly soldiers or sailors standing tall for freedom for him. Nope, a kid who eats hot dogs faster than anybody else represents the true American hero.

• Randy Neal suggests we should stop wasting time and get on with the Second American Revolution.

• Elrod tells us that the military plays a relatively minor role in securing freedom, and that eugenicist Margaret Sanger and Wobbly Eugene Debs contributed far more to American freedom than did Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson or any of the other statesmen/philosophers who first codified and wrote down the principles that made America unique in the world.

• Andy Axel adds Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and Andy Warhol to the list of luminaries who are far more important to freedom than John or Sam Adams,or any other statesman for that matter. I'm sorry to see that Carrot Top didn't make the list.

• Cafkia tells us that public oaths are meaningless and serve no real purpose, since those who would keep an oath would do so even without the oath. This of course brings into question the entire idea of celebrating our independence on the 4th of July. After all, all the founders did on that day was swear an oath to an ideal they were already committed to and then make that oath public. America still would have become free without that meaningless public oath, right?

A short while ago, I wrote a post questioning whether America was still worthy of the sacrifices made by the men and women who join the military. Reading the above doesn't answer that question fully, but it does suggest that worthy or not, there are many Americans who don't even recognize the magnitude much less appreciate that sacrifice.

And that's too bad.

For myself, I honor the courage and dedication that leads our young people to serve America, even when America doesn't appreciate that service. I honor the wisdom and honor of the men who stood up and recognized our God given freedoms in the Declaration of Independence, then backed up their words with action. They fought in isolation, surrounded by the majority who preferred living in bondage to freedom; outnumbered and out-gunned, and against all odds, thes patriots won. I honor the men who codified these freshly defended freedoms into law in the form of our Constitution, a truly magnificent document that is still relevant 200+ years later, a testimony to the wisdom of those who wrote it. I honor all those who through the centuries have realized that all freedoms are precious, and under attack from within and without, and who labor ceaselessly to defend them against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And I honor those living today who still hold to those precious truths despite the rampant cynicism of a decadent culture. You are the remnant, the last echoes of the great statesmen and patriots from two centuries past.

No matter what happens over the next two centuries,the American ideal will live on in you.

Posted by Rich at July 5, 2007 2:03 PM | TrackBack