Well, the second half of the year begins. I don't know about you, but for me the first half of the year builds towards Independence Day while the second part rises until Christmas. It's not the worst way to approach time.
I don't know how many days until Christmas; I'm not into it that much. It's simply the macro way I see the year. Works for me.
We're still a great nation which has done great things. While we have our flaws, and who isn't flawed, we exist as a beacon of hope for many. And we are certainly not nearly as bad as even too many Americans seem to think. But hubris, like all error, is endemic to the human condition.
So, I'll grill today and then go see fireworks tonight and be thankful for the blessings of being an American.
God Bless the USA. Happy Independence Day everyone.
We're still a great nation which has done great things. While we have our flaws, and who isn't flawed, we exist as a beacon of hope for many. And we are certainly not nearly as bad as even too many Americans seem to think. But hubris, like all error, is endemic to the human condition.
So I'll grill today and then go see fireworks tonight, and be thankful for the blessings of being an American.
God Bless the USA. Happy Independence Day everyone.
Today is our actual Independence Day, though few realize it. The Second Continental Congress passed the resolution for Independence on July 2,1776; it's attached to the end of the Declaration. It's known as the Lee Resolution, introduced to Congress by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and reads:
Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.
It has a ringing quality all it's own, don't you think?
When John Adams wrote of the 'fireworks, pomp and parade' which he foresaw as future celebrations of our independence, he presumed they would occur on future July 2nds. Yet the Declaration of Thomas Jefferson took hold, and precedence deemed that July 4th should forever be the anniversary of American Independence.
There is today's history lesson for you, on this most, if forgotten, historic day.
Ah, July 4th. Tomorrow. Tomorrow we celebrate our independence. But did you know we're actually off by two days?
The Second Continental Congress passed the resolution on independence July 2, 1776. Our actual Independence Day was yesterday. So what's the big deal about the 4th?
It was on the that day in 1776 that Congress approved the Declaration of Independence.
Six of one, half dozen of the other? Perhaps. Or maybe we should go all out American and recognize both days.
It's just a thought. The stores would love it though.
We're still a great nation which has done great things. While we have our flaws, and who isn't flawed, we exist as a beacon of hope for many. And we are certainly not nearly as bad as even too many Americans seem to think. But hubris is, like all error, endemic to the human condition.
So I'll grill today and then go see fireworks tonight, and be thankful for the blessings of being an American.
God Bless the USA. Happy Independence Day everyone.
It was around 8:30 in the morning and I was I think 10, just goofing off in my backyard. I saw me Grandpa Joe come out of his house (he and Grams lived next door to us) but he didn't see me. He walked out his back gate and up towards the old barn where he worked, the same old barn I have now. Naturally, I had to investigate. What could he be doing on a holiday?
I got to the shop right as he was opening the truck doors. "What are y'doin, boy?" he asked in that vague gruff manner of his when he wasn't in full on gruff mode.
"Wonderin' what you're doing," I answered honestly.
"Well, c'mon in then." Joe was welding something underneath one of the stake trucks he used for delivering the welding equipment he rented. I held a flashlight for him as he scoped out the job. Then he fired up an old Hobart welder he used exclusively in the barn, gave me a welding helmet with strict instructions to keep it on until he said I could remove it, and commenced with the repair on the truck's frame.
After a while he paused for a break. We went and got donuts ('vittles' he always called coffee break donuts or snacks) and ate them while we drank our coffee as he smoked a cigarette or four. Then he went back to finish the job, me wearing that far too big and heavy helmet and holding a light for him when asked. Soon we were done.
He shut everything down and did a quick clean up, and then locked up the barn. He turned to me and took a five dollar bill from his wallet and told me to take it. "You worked too," he told me to tell his son and daughter-in-law who might wonder how'd I'd come across such largesse. Five bucks was huge to a 10 year old in 1970. I said thank you. In fact, I believe it was more like "Thank YOU, Grandpa Joe!"
"Aw Hell," he said back, as was his wont.
So I earned my first pay on a long ago July 4th. And I had a really good time doing it.
You see, the Second Continental Congress passed the resolution declaring independence on July 2, 1776. It is today of which John Adams, arguably the most important figure in the drive for breaking away from England (he tapped George Washington to head the Continental Army and Jefferson to write the Declaration as well as forcefully arguing for it in Congress) wrote that on future July Seconds there would be 'pageant and pomp and parade'. The Fourth, well, was to be just another day.
So what happened on July 4 that we remember so well? Congress approved the Declaration of Independence document, the famous tome of Thomas Jefferson's (with some help from the aforementioned Adams as well as Ben Franklin and two others) on July 4, 1776. Technically, we were already independent then.
You can argue quite reasonably, and it has a strong case philosophically, that the actual Declaration is more important than the act of declaring independence and thus deserves the higher value. Still, I might grill a burger today just the same.
It was around 8:30 in the morning and I was 9 or 10, just goofing off in my backyard. I saw Grandpa Joe come out of his house (he and Grams lived next door to us) but he didn't see me. He walked out his back gate and up towards the old barn where he worked, the same old barn I have now. Naturally, I had to investigate. What could he be doing on a holiday?
I got to the shop right as he was opening the truck doors. "What are y'doin, boy?" he asked in that vague gruff manner of his when he wasn't in full on gruff mode.
"Wonderin' what you're doing," I answered honestly.
"Well, c'mon in then". Joe was welding something underneath one of the stake trucks he used for delivering the welding equipment he rented. I held a flashlight for him as he scoped out the job. Then he fired up an old Hobart welder he used exclusively in the barn, gave me a welding helmet with strict instructions to keep it on until he said I could remove it, and commenced with the repair on the truck's frame.
After a while he paused for a break. We went and got donuts ('vittles' he always called coffee break donuts or snacks) and ate them while we drank our coffee as he smoked a cigarette or four. Then he went back to finish the job, me wearing that far too big and heavy helmet and holding a light for him when asked. Soon we were done.
He shut everything down and did a quick clean up, and then locked up the barn. He turned to me and took a five dollar bill from his wallet and told me to take it. "You worked too," he told me to tell his son and daughter-in-law who might wonder how'd I'd come across such largesse. Five bucks was huge, to a 10 year old in 1970. I said thank you. In fact, I believe it was more like "Thank YOU, Grandpa Joe!"
"Aw Hell," he said back, as was his wont.
So I earned my first pay on a long ago July 4th. And I had a really good time doing it.
We do not think this means that we're automatically better than anyone else. Certainly not on a case by case basis. In some things at some times other people have done things better than us. Rather significantly better than us indeed. But taken on the whole, we have done things better than an awful lot of our friends in the world.
The Roman Empire lasted, if a bit of artistic license is incorporated, somewhere around 1500 years. Closer to 2200 years, if we are to take Romulus and Remus seriously and incorporate the Roman Republic. Yet we eradicated slavery by the blood of many patriots within 100 years of our birth. They had it for the bulk of their run, if not all of it.
To be sure, the British Empire eradicated it long before we did. Yet how were we to expect that while the British Empire held us in chains itself?
We are not today, if you listen to our European friends, quite so enlightened as they are. Yet our blood made their vaunted enlightenment quite possible, and their enlightenment may still destroy European civilization as we and they know it. Will the Euro survive Greece? Will Europe survive it? Yet we are here, and the similar fears about us somehow do not appear quite so awful. The loss of civilization for an single nation compared to that of an entire continet seem somehow muted.
They do not understand our horror at the recent Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare. Well, we do not understand their fascination with cradle to grave socialism. We do not understand their belief in the government over the person. We feel, quite securely, we might add, that our sense of personal freedom and responsibility trumps their statist ways.
Freedom to many seems to mean simply throwing off the old chains. Is that real freedom for Iran and Egypt? Too many people forget that it is an enlightened and responsible freedom which truly makes a free people. Simply tossing aside the old ways means nothing, if it should be replaced by a newer and more voracious despotism.
We had something at the start of our Republic which many today or indeed in world history do not nor did not have: the realization, the understanding,the knowledge, that freedom is more than the lack of authoritarianism. Freedom is disciplined, freedom is rational, freedom is meaningful only in the context of the profound and the eternal; freedom is only possible within the confines of the just and true. When we want what we want precisely because it is what we ought to want, we are free. We become free when we accept and embrace the true, and are willing to defend it against the false. Anything before that, and we are merely selfish.
Has America always and everywhere stood for that ideal? Of course not. Nothing of human construct will ever stand for that. But, quite frankly, and at the risk of the scorn of many of our friends, we have come closest. For a nation to succeed as we have takes foresight and Providence. WE have been blessed with both more so than most other nations in history. That is American Exceptionalism. And that is what we believe on this Independence Day 2012.
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