Indedependence Day should be more than just a dayCharter Oak-Ute NEWSpaper — Schleswig Leader, Thursday, July 5, 2007 – Page 3
I like to write a special column for the Fourth of July because it is one of my favorite holidays. Unfortunately I missed my chance to write one before the Fourth and because of the way it lands in the middle of the week, few of you will read this one on the Fourth, most of you will get your paper on July fifth. But that’s okay.
Really, it could be a whole season. Virginia Delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution calling for independence from Britain on June 7. The Congress passed another resolution calling for independence on July 2 already. The Declaration was really just a formality, after all a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that you should declare the causes which impel you to separation from your mother country.
John Hancock, as president of Congress was the only delegate to really sign it by the Fourth. Most of them didn’t sign it until August 2. Thomas McKean of Delaware didn’t get around to it until 1781. The first newspaper to print the Declaration was the Pennsylvania Evening Post on July 6, 1776. On July 8th the Declaration had its first public reading in Philadelphia's Independence Square.
This column has really been getting too long. I get to writing and just get carried away. Before I know it, I’m up to 8 or 900 words and poor Michelle at the newspaper office can only fit one recipe at the bottom of the page. I really need to keep it down between 500 to maybe 750 tops. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, it was 1,817 words; Congress made 68 changes, killing 480 words- far be it from the patriots to criticize King George for the practice of slavery.
So I’m a day late. Hallmark doesn’t have any “belated Independence Day” cards that I’ve found, so I just have to count on your good natures to forgive me.
It’s the thought that counts, doesn’t it? How do you send a birthday card to a country?
Why do I love this crazy, uncouth, 231 year old amalgamation of people and cultures from all over the globe, ideas, hopes, dreams? I think it’s because it at least used to be founded on principles drawn from the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment that promised fairness and honor.
That core second paragraph says it all;
“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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
In other words, it ought to be obvious that no one is better than anyone else because of where they come from. Every human being on Earth is entitled to certain God-given rights. Since it’s human nature to trample on each other’s rights, we establish a system of laws in order to balance all of our competing interests and make sure that the playing field is evened out for everyone.
What do you do when you loved ones just aren’t themselves? Let’s say someone in your family is acting different, maybe due to mental illness, or someone’s diet has them headed for complications of diabetes or high blood pressure? How about when a friend is in a destructive relationship, or has started abusing drugs or alcohol? Do you hold an intervention? Do you try to talk with them, lovingly yet honestly? Do you confront them? Do you abandon them? The least you can do, which sometimes ends up being the most powerful, is to pray for them.
So here we are, 231 years after dissolving our bonds with England, I wonder if we aren’t more like the old British Empire than we care to admit. Does everybody have to turn into their parents? When I read through the long list of offences that make up the bulk of the Declaration (that most of us never bother to look at) I wonder how many people around the world could accuse us of.
Secret prisons, secret “courts,” torture, spying on our own citizens, reversing desegregation, a regressive tax structure, staggering trade deficits, and lest we forget, using false intelligence to justify unilateral and preemptive invasions of countries that don’t have weapons of mass destruction and occupying them for years.
With Jefferson, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
But he provided the solution; “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
So that the REAL way to celebrate the Fourth of July is not with fireworks in the summer, but by taking some time to caucus in January and casting your ballot on the first Tuesday in November.
Okay, now I'm pushing 900 words again. Ah, but Jefferson didn't have a blog- I can post this in it's entirety, and cut out a good 300 words or so before I turn it in for printing.
Happy Birthday America, now knock this shit off, you're not acting like yourself. Act your age, not your President's IQ. Thank you.
Really, it could be a whole season. Virginia Delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution calling for independence from Britain on June 7. The Congress passed another resolution calling for independence on July 2 already. The Declaration was really just a formality, after all a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that you should declare the causes which impel you to separation from your mother country.
John Hancock, as president of Congress was the only delegate to really sign it by the Fourth. Most of them didn’t sign it until August 2. Thomas McKean of Delaware didn’t get around to it until 1781. The first newspaper to print the Declaration was the Pennsylvania Evening Post on July 6, 1776. On July 8th the Declaration had its first public reading in Philadelphia's Independence Square.
This column has really been getting too long. I get to writing and just get carried away. Before I know it, I’m up to 8 or 900 words and poor Michelle at the newspaper office can only fit one recipe at the bottom of the page. I really need to keep it down between 500 to maybe 750 tops. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration, it was 1,817 words; Congress made 68 changes, killing 480 words- far be it from the patriots to criticize King George for the practice of slavery.
So I’m a day late. Hallmark doesn’t have any “belated Independence Day” cards that I’ve found, so I just have to count on your good natures to forgive me.
It’s the thought that counts, doesn’t it? How do you send a birthday card to a country?
Why do I love this crazy, uncouth, 231 year old amalgamation of people and cultures from all over the globe, ideas, hopes, dreams? I think it’s because it at least used to be founded on principles drawn from the philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment that promised fairness and honor.
That core second paragraph says it all;
“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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
In other words, it ought to be obvious that no one is better than anyone else because of where they come from. Every human being on Earth is entitled to certain God-given rights. Since it’s human nature to trample on each other’s rights, we establish a system of laws in order to balance all of our competing interests and make sure that the playing field is evened out for everyone.
What do you do when you loved ones just aren’t themselves? Let’s say someone in your family is acting different, maybe due to mental illness, or someone’s diet has them headed for complications of diabetes or high blood pressure? How about when a friend is in a destructive relationship, or has started abusing drugs or alcohol? Do you hold an intervention? Do you try to talk with them, lovingly yet honestly? Do you confront them? Do you abandon them? The least you can do, which sometimes ends up being the most powerful, is to pray for them.
So here we are, 231 years after dissolving our bonds with England, I wonder if we aren’t more like the old British Empire than we care to admit. Does everybody have to turn into their parents? When I read through the long list of offences that make up the bulk of the Declaration (that most of us never bother to look at) I wonder how many people around the world could accuse us of.
Secret prisons, secret “courts,” torture, spying on our own citizens, reversing desegregation, a regressive tax structure, staggering trade deficits, and lest we forget, using false intelligence to justify unilateral and preemptive invasions of countries that don’t have weapons of mass destruction and occupying them for years.
With Jefferson, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
But he provided the solution; “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
So that the REAL way to celebrate the Fourth of July is not with fireworks in the summer, but by taking some time to caucus in January and casting your ballot on the first Tuesday in November.
Okay, now I'm pushing 900 words again. Ah, but Jefferson didn't have a blog- I can post this in it's entirety, and cut out a good 300 words or so before I turn it in for printing.
Happy Birthday America, now knock this shit off, you're not acting like yourself. Act your age, not your President's IQ. Thank you.
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