Honoring the USA on Independence Day

[Geee]

American Thinker:

 

Independence Day, better known as July Fourth, is a national holiday established to honor the founding of America. The holiday also commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. American Thinker interviewed a few patriots who have served their country, asking them what this holiday means to them, as well as how current events affect American values.

Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ) celebrates this holiday by reconnecting with family and country. For him, the most important American values are personal accountability and responsibility. Part of this country's greatness is that anyone "can make something of themselves. You can aspire to do exceptional things, yet if you fail, you have the opportunity to build again. That is the magic of America."

Fast and Furious and the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Arizona immigration law are examples cited by Congressman Gosar of issues having an effect on American values. He insists that the Obama administration used Fast and Furious to attack American's Second Amendment rights, a core part of America. "Gunsellers were e-mailing and calling, saying how uncomfortable they were having to sell these guns. Yet ATF told them to do it anyway and did not attempt to track these guns sold to the Mexican drug cartel. This was done to try to catch our Second Amendment folks in a double jeopardy."

Congressman Gosar believes that the Statue of Liberty is an acknowledgement of coming to America the right way and ultimately becoming a part of American society. The Statue of Liberty signifies how America is a nation of immigrants. It is the "entrance of liberty and freedom" for those who are oppressed. Appearing on the Statue's pedestal are the famous words of the poet Emma Lazarus: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." The congressman sees this line as a representation that "[w]e are a country founded on immigration, but legal immigration. We must remember we were founded on a set of principles and rules."

According to Gosar, the Supreme Court ruling left the door open when Justice Kennedy stated that Arizona is a victim: "With power comes responsibility, and the sound exercise of national power over immigration depends on the Nation's meeting its responsibility to base its laws on a political will informed by searching, thoughtful, rational civic discourse. Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues[.]" Gosar is not upset with this statement. In fact, he feels that Congress was given the power by the Constitution to make federal law, and now Congress has to act to implement a bill supporting the states through coordination with the federal government to enforce the immigration laws. He stated, "A provincial part of the Constitution is to make sure our border is secure. This is a fundamental basic right of nations. Then we can have the discussion of what to do with those here. We are considered a nation of immigrants. With July Fourth we should reaffirm what America stands for: that it was built on the backs of people who wanted to give and took less. Now it has become an 'I' country instead of a 'we.' We need to re-instill our American values as espoused by our first president, George Washington. He was a great leader who cared about this country and someone who orchestrated solutions by magically bringing people together. This administration is not doing that; they are not working together to come up with an immigration solution."

Someone who also orchestrated a solution to keep America safe after 9/11 is Jose Rodriguez, Jr., the former director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, who has written a book with Bill Harlow, titled Hard Measures. He considers July Fourth one of the most important holidays since it is a day that conveys a sense of patriotism. He told American Thinker that one of the major reasons he and many people have joined the CIA is because "patriotism runs deep and there is a common denominator, the love for our country. Having lived overseas, you recognize how valuable and important our way of life is -- the Democratic institutions, the individual freedoms, and our liberties. For me, July Fourth represents all of that and more."

[Valin]

America Celebrates Independence Day

July 4 2012

 

From the far reaches of Alaska to the Gulf coast, Americans on Wednesday are celebrating the 236th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the formal announcement of America's end as a British colony.

 

Tens of millions of small-town Americans and city dwellers alike will line parade routes, watch fireworks, attend picnics, concerts and family gatherings. In Washington, hundreds of thousands of spectators will pack the National Mall for a nationally televised concert and a massive display of fireworks.

 

(Snip)

 

Fireworks also will light the night skies over hallowed battlefields from the War of 1812 and America's 19th century Civil War. Similar festivities are slated for Philadelphia — the nation's first capital — Annapolis, Maryland, and New York City.

 

Drafted by Thomas Jefferson in June 1776, the Declaration of Independence is America's most cherished symbol of freedom. The Continental Congress formally approved the document weeks later on July 4.

 

(Snip)

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!

[Geee]

On This of All Fourths of July

On this of all Fourths of July, two things about the American tradition of religious liberty are worthy of note. First, the American conception of religious liberty is a tradition unto itself; it is exceptional, with “no model on the face of the globe” (Federalist 14). Second, it is framed in universal terms so that it belongs not just to Americans, but to all humans — and not just to Christians, but to believers of all stripes and kinds. In his autobiography, Thomas Jefferson wrote about the Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (enacted in 1786):
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion”; the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
The crux of the original American argument for religious liberty is found in three documents of the Founding period: the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), the aforementioned Bill, and James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments (1785).
Advertisement
The Virginia Declaration of Rights defines religion as “the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it.” This was the definition used throughout the Founding period, codified in Webster’s dictionary in 1828. This definition was held to be self-evident. For anyone who understands herself as a creature, it is self-evident that she owes her Creator at least gratitude; and then, upon contemplating the immensity of his creation, the worship due to a being of a higher, indeed altogether other, order. Furthermore, this duty “can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.”
Thomas Jefferson adds two further notes to this conception. The first is this: “Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his Supreme will that free it shall remain.” And second, human persons exercise this freedom, not by caprice, but only by a personal understanding and reasoned grasp of the facts present to them. As the opening line of the Bill notes: “the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304623/all-fourths-july-elizabeth-shaw

[Valin]

[Geee]

The Last Fourth of July

 

 

Get out your firecrackers, ladies and gentlemen. This may be the last Fourth of July – at least as we know it.

Yes, I realize that’s a bit hyperbolic. But this is the year our national character is up for a vote. American exceptionalism is on the line. If we lose it, we may never get it back. History will have made the Big Turn.

 

 

Now to be honest, just like our president, I was embarrassed by the term American exceptionalism, when I first heard it. I mean why were we special? Who were we to be the boss of the world?

 

These were the obvious questions that rattled around my brain as a college student and later as a young leftist-type in the period of the civil rights and anti-war movements.

 

Yet somewhere deep down I was a patriot even then. I knew the free world would not have defeated the Nazis without us. I knew the fight against Soviet communism was a good fight and that we must win.

 

 

But it wasn’t until much later — still about twenty-five years ago now — that I came to a deeper understanding of American exceptionalism, ironically from a French girlfriend. “Roger,” she told me, “you are the window of the world.”

The “window of the world”? I was taken aback. It was one of the moments when someone tells you something you already knew, but failed to acknowledge. For the last centuries, America had indeed been the “window of the world.”

If someone from a galaxy far, far away were to ask what was good, what was original about our planet, they would have to say our country, what it has struggled to achieve throughout its history and the ultimately positive manner in which it has influenced the human race at large. We protected the world from its worst impulses and pointed the way to freedom. And we led it toward prosperity while we did it.

That window is in danger of closing.

The same forces that made me embarrassed by American exceptionalism as a young man are shutting it, the same guilty feelings that propelled my generation from idealism to self-abnegation. And that generation now has as its standard bearer a somewhat younger president who eagerly does its work for it, our unfortunate son.

So here we are at the Fourth of July 2012, staring at what seems very much like a precipice.

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2012/07/04/the-last-fourth-of-july/

[Geee]

THE ETERNAL MEANING OF INDEPENDENCE DAY

 

 

On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience when Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas invited Lincoln to come join him on the balcony to watch the speech. In his speech Douglas rang the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and fall for Douglas’s Senate seat.

Douglas paid tribute to Lincoln as a “kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen and an honorable opponent,” but took issue with Lincoln’s June 16 speech to the Illinois Republican convention that had named him its candidate for Douglas’s seat. In that speech Lincoln had famously asserted that the nation could not exist “half slave and half free.” According to Douglas, Lincoln’s assertion was inconsistent with the “diversity” in domestic institutions that was “the great safeguard of our liberties.” Then as now, “diversity” was a shibboleth hiding an evil institution that could not be defended on its own terms.

Douglas responded to Lincoln’s condemnation of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision — a condemnation that was the centerpiece of Lincoln’s convention speech. “I am free to say to you,” Douglas said, “that in my opinion this government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men, in such manner as they should determine.”

Lincoln invited Douglas’s audience to return the next evening for his reply to Douglas’s speech. Lincoln’s speech of July 10, 1858, is one of his many great speeches, but in one respect it is uniquely great. It concludes with an explanation of the meaning of this day to Americans with matchless eloquence and insight in words that remain as relevant now as then.

Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.

 

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/07/the-eternal-meaning-of-independence-day-2.php

[Valin]

I hate to be the turd in the punch bowl but....

 

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

 

http://youtu.be/FmzldNFgD40

 

Do yourself a favor...maybe not today, buy tomorrow?

Beyond the Theory of Moral Relativity

Ed Driscoll

7/4/12