Happy treason day everyone! It’s the 4th of July, the day Americans celebrate our founding fathers telling King George where to stick his tyranny with the immortal and paradigm shifting words: “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.”[i]
Admittedly, we as a people have not been consistent or universal in upholding these founding principles for large portions of our history. Progress has been continual but often slow, way too slow, and it continues today. Perhaps in my lifetime Americans as a whole can take a step back, look at these ideals, and do everything in their power to put them into effect.
We celebrate Independence Day in truly American ways, namely hoisting the flag, cooking and consuming large quantities of meat, drinking lots of beer while we watch baseball, making fun of Europeans, and most importantly, blowing things up. In many places, a lot of these things occur in conjunction with fighter planes zooming overhead. Damn this country is awesome!
Every July 4th there are so many good things to celebrate but it will not be a surprise to anyone that things are not perfect. In so many ways and in so many places freedom is under attack. Every day it seems like more control is ceded to someone or something that is not the individual citizen and more and more tyrants are popping up all of the time in seemingly un-American institutions.
Home owner’s associations come to mind. The idea that a soccer mom with nothing but free time and a power trip or a cranky retiree should have the ability to tell you what color you can paint the mailbox that you own and pay for is insane to me. I’m sure John Adams rolls over in his grave every time someone has to ask permission to erect a fence on their property like the orphan child Oliver begging for more food.
Government at all levels is no better. I won’t go into the myriad of ways that our rights get slowly sapped away by politicians or the farcical way in which Congress has abdicated its job of making laws to unelected bureaucrats, but I would bet everything I own that this was not the soldiers who suffered at Valley Forge and fought in hand to hand combat at the trenches outside of Yorktown had in mind when they joined the Continental Army.
While all of our society’s ails will not be fixed overnight, I think there is one glaring and obscenely offensive thing that has become almost an obsession with some groups in this country and needs to be dealt with immediately; something so ridiculous and something that would be patently offensive to those who fought and died in the Revolution. I’m sure that it’s glaringly obvious that I’m, of course talking about … the obsession with the British royal family.
We fought and won two wars so we wouldn’t have to care one bit which prince or duke married who or speculating about the name of the baby who will be eighty-second in line to the throne. If a town crier walked into a Virginia pub in 1785 and started to read from a parchment that speculated as to what advice an English prince told his nephew about whom he was going to marry, that crier would have been rightfully tarred and feathered.
For the record, I am not advocating tarring and feathering anyone who buys a magazine in the grocery store line with a cover dedicated to Harry and Williams’ theoretical feud. Far from it. Not only is hot tar dangerous and terrible to clean off, quality feathers are hard to come by, especially in a large enough quantity. However, if a friend or co-worker comes up and asks if you think Meagan and Harry are being pushed out of the limelight because Kate is feeling upstaged, might I suggest taking some serious, but less dangerous action.
An airhorn would do the trick as would a hard flick to the forehead. In the spirit of how we commemorate our independence, perhaps setting off some firecrackers to make your point. Or my personal favorite, produce a pocket-sized black power cannon from your pocket and fire a volley. It’s very effective and a fitting testament to those who sacrificed so much so we needn’t worry about the shenanigans in Buckingham Palace. In case anyone was curious, yes, I already have my cannon.
In closing, enjoy your Independence Day. Eat a burger, have
a drink, blow something up, and slap anyone who mentions the royals. As always,
thanks for reading and God Bless America.
[i] Note that Jefferson only said “the pursuit of happiness”, no guarantee implied. It was never in anyone’s mind that it would be a governmental function to make the populous happy as a whole, just to ensure our freedom and get out of the way of the citizenry to make a good life on their own.
