4.7.04
Happy Independence Day: I didn't actually get out to see any fireworks, but was driving from point to point earlier this eveing. I happened to be driving home from Mount Vernon when I heard Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be an American". As the song started, I saw fireworks from Ft. Belvoir in the distance. It gave me chills, and I thought that my eyes would water up. Thinking about it a few hours later still gives me chills. Those two events, as well as driving through Old Town Alexandria (where much history was made in the 1770s) gave me some sense of what our nation's independence means, and what the freedom of her people means.
It means that I'm free not to view fireworks from a stationery point (as many people were doing, both in Alexandria - it's not a bad view of the sky above the National Mall - and further south, at Fort Belvoir). It means that I'm free to drive around.
More fundamentally, it means that I'm free to speak my mind whenever I think my fellow citizens are wrong about an issue - something for which I give George Mason, whose Gunston Hall is closer to where I grew up than is Mount Vernon, a plurality of the credit.
It means that I am free to defend myself physically, and to defend my beliefs (as well as to act on them, provided they rob no one else of their fundamental liberties).
It means that I am secure against unwarranted searches, that I am secure against self-incrimination, that I am secure from torture, that I am secure from open-ended litigation, and that the federal government shall not become Imperial (ignored though this last provision has been over the last century...)
It means that I am part of the body politic, part of that no longer small and yet ever-expanding group of people on this planet who exercise self-determination. It means, more broadly, that we carry the torch of liberty, on that "shining city on a hill".
It means that I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men
who died who gave that right to me.
And I'll gladly stand up
next to you and defend her still today
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land;
God bless the U.S.A.
Happy Independence Day.
Hopefully the two hundred twenty-ninth year of this wonderful experiment in freedom will be as great as the first two hundred twenty-eight.
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