This Independence Day marks the 250th year since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which was the birth of a new nation. I’m sure most of you have heard something about it by now. Two hundred and fifty years is just a blip in time if we consider other nations like Italy, England, China, Russia and others with rich histories that go back many hundreds of years. Through the centuries, these nations have undergone many types of government, leaders, economies, enemies, and world status. The United States started as an experiment by a group of highly intelligent and enlightened men who were committing treason against their government and praying that what they were doing would work and wouldn’t get them killed in the most undignified ways. The experiment they started 250 years ago, for the most part, has stayed intact.
From almost the very beginning, the United States was holding her own and quickly becoming a player on the world stage, to becoming the world power she is today.
The people of the United States have always had a flair of arrogance. How else could one nation of several in the Americas consider her people to be ‘Americans’, and get the rest of the world to do the same? Though it is difficult to imagine now what else we would be called. United Statesmen? I mean United Statespersons? That would be weird.
We have always been a people of bigger, better, more powerful. I mean look at our national bird. Isn’t the bald eagle the most majestic bird you have ever seen? Do you ever see one and not stop and really look at it? Most wrecks I have almost had, were from spotting eagles while driving. Thank God, our bird is not the wild turkey, which was Benjamin Franklin’s suggestion. Can you imagine a turkey on the back of our coins and on all our government emblems? I do not think we would have lasted this long as turkeys.
We have the largest library in the world in the Library of Congress. Even the building is so magnificent that it has a great amount of Italian marble. In fact, United States buildings and monuments comprise the largest amount of Italian marble outside of Italy. Our historic government buildings are extraordinary, our monuments are tremendous, our national museums are beautiful works of art themselves but are homes to some very important and one-of-a-kind artifacts and pieces of art, as well as skilled specialists doing ground-breaking research. Overall, we have the best athletes, the best military, the best medical research, best agriculture technology, and the greatest diversity of landscape and climate throughout our nation.
The world trades on the U.S. dollar. In many nations, English is required as a second language in school, as it is the international language for business. When the U.S. economy is down, it is still stronger than most.
Freedom. We often hear grumbling or grumble ourselves about how we are losing our freedoms. Every group has their complaints about how the government is holding them down, but the truth is, there is no other place on earth like the United States when it comes to freedom. I can pray, meet in a church building open to the public, have religious books in my possession and a picture of my deity hanging on my house, and no one is going to arrest me. Anyone in the LGBTQ+ community can live openly, work and enjoy life without fear of being thrown from a roof or publicly beaten. Females get the same education and rights as males. We are not required to have a male family member to escort us in public, and we can marry whoever we want, without parental, religious, or state permission. The government cannot discriminate against any law-abiding citizen because of race, religion, sexual orientation, or disabilities. We can live where we want, work in the field we choose, join the military or not, have as many children as we want or none at all. We can be preppers or protesters, Red Sox fans or Yankee fans, have an arsenal of weapons or be completely against all personal ownership of firearms, be a Democrat or a Republican, Christian, Muslim or Jew.
Yes, our government overreaches sometimes, but we have the courts to make sure our constitutional rights are preserved. It may not be perfect, as nothing is, but it turns out right more than not in the end. If we do not like how things are going, we can always let those in charge, and everyone else know through the freedom of press and the right to PEACEFUL protest.
There are those who always want to bring up the bad, especially since Make America Great Again became a thing. We cannot forget our history lest we repeat it. We have some dark times in our history: slavery, Japanese internment camps, Jim Crow laws, removing indigenous people and treating them inhumanely, inhumane treatment of the mentally ill and handicapped, brother fighting brother in the Civil War, treatment of Chinese railroad workers, making the LGBTQ community illegal, exploiting circus ‘freaks’ and animals, forced experimenting on people such as the Tuskegee Airmen and most recently COVID isolation and vaccines. These are just a few things I can think of that were not our finest hours. Although we are not unlike most other nations who are guilty of many of the same things, we as a nation have accepted that we have made mistakes and people’s lives were destroyed by the actions or inactions of the government. Most of those harmed are long gone. The government has apologized for many of these aberrations, to the decedents and those who are here now trying to make things right. We cannot change history as much as many may try, but we can strive to learn and do better, which is what we have done in most cases.
Through the good and the bad, the United States has always stepped up when she was needed. No matter how divided politically we can get, there are things that can still bring us together. I never felt closer to my fellow man than right after 9/11 when we were all helping each other be ok. I never felt the shared joy of so many people as I felt watching 4th of July fireworks in Boston with over a half million other people. I never felt more patriotic than singing God Bless the USA in the arms of fellow soldiers in Korea weeks after 9/11. I love being an American. I thank God often for putting me here and giving me the privileges and freedoms this land provides. I cannot imagine not being free, nor do I want to try. Never once have I said if this one or that one gets elected, I am leaving the country, or that I am ashamed of my country. But I would welcome those who think they would have a better life somewhere else to go ahead and leave, because there are millions of people trying to get into this great nation that most of us inherited. I am quite sure most of them will be ecstatic to be here.
America has always stood out from the rest from her birth in July 1776 to July 2026, this young lady is aging well and hopefully learning from her experiences. This July 4 also marks two hundred years since both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died, both on July 4, both 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. How’s that for some ironic history trivia?
I have a few quarters from our bicentennial in 1976. I barely remember 1976, I was four at the time, but I always got excited to get the quarters with the colonial fifes and drums on the back. This year I am getting something special for my collection to mark 250, and I am spending time with my family on the 4th. I may try to catch some of the festivities in D.C. on television. So, I urge you to grab something for the kids to remember what they did on the big day, hang out a flag and enjoy 250 years of freedom like no other nation ever. Happy Independence Day! Happy 250!
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