On Independence Day

Independence Day. The day that we take to celebrate the founding of our country and honor those that have embraced the truths that were written in the Declaration of Independence all those years ago. We sing the National Anthem, hang our flags and burn millions of dollars worth of fireworks. We have symbols and words and songs to express the love of our country, but what are we doing to ensure that the basic ideals that they are all founded upon survive? Here are to examples of what I mean.

How many people each year go to the Statue of Liberty and read the words imprinted there? Hundreds of thousands is my guess. And what does it say?

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

Yet we can’t even figure out how to welcome those that work our fields, clean our houses and do jobs that most native born Americans are not willing to do. It’s shameful. We embrace Lady Liberty and in the next breathe curse the very people she beacons.

We look to our Constitution to provide a clear avenue to provide Justice to our Nation. In fact the very beginning sentence calls for Justice. It says-

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Yet our very own President who is sworn to uphold the Constitution calls it a “piece of paper.” He and Mr. Cheney have done everything they can to avoid the checks and balances that the Constitution outlines and yet turned around and used it to protect their cohorts. Why is it o.k. for others to go to jail, testify when subpoeaned, but not o.k. for them?

I could go on and on. My point here is to urge all Americans to take a step back from the barbeque, the fireworks and all the other schwag that we have encased our American Pride in and think about the simple principles that our country was founded on to insure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for ALL. Reflect, think and then challenge and demand our government to be what we believe it to be and praise it to be every Independence Day. In closing I leave with a hero and true Americans words.

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.” -Frederick Douglass