Happy Birthday America!

This week we will be celebrating the 4th. of July or as I prefer to call it, Independence Day! Independence Day is one of my favorite holidays and one that I believe every American regardless of station of life ought to be able to enjoy.  I love John Adams' original idea of how to celebrate the occassion. After the Declaration of Independence was signed He said that every year thereafter people around the United States would celebrate the occassion with parades, fireworks, music, toasts, speeches, etc . . .  and so we should and so we have.

Now in 1776 while there were a few small celebrations the event was largely just another day in the life of the people of the new country. A war was still raging and that took center stage at the time. However, in 1777 an eleaborate celebration was staged that contained many of the elements included in today's celebrations. There it was, Adams' picnics, fireworks, fun & games, cannons being fired and speeches being made as a nation celebrated it birthday. Let's celebrate and not castigate!

I know I will be continuing that tradition albeit celebrating by means of modern technology in patriotic events being held all across the country.  In every case there will be as Adams predicted, "fireworks, music, toasts, speeches" and everything will be decorated  in red, white and blue and a large dose of capitalism as venders hawk their goods. But my focus will be on celebrating the nation's birth and the concept of "We the People of the United States" and the establishing of "A more perfect Union."

I hope that every American and friend of America will celebrate the day for what it really is: the anniversary of our  declaration of our independence as a nation and our intention of forming a  "more perfect union". . . a distinctively American Republic with a governement, as Lincoln would express it, "of the people, by the people, for the people."

May we take this day to recommit ourselves to see to it that this governemnt does "not perish from the earth" and remains committed to the proposition that "all men are created equal by their creator." Franklin's challenge when he said in answer to a question by a Mrs Powel, "A Republic, if you can keep it” still applies today.

The Fourth of July . . . Independence Day . . . should be a day of national unity. It should be the one day out of the year where we put aside our religious and political differences; cast aside our economic and cultural distinctions; and abstian from vitriolic speech. I hope that the media, both national and local will join in the celebration and refuse to carry or broadcaste anything that doesn't exhault America. Let them show us the national celebrations as they take place in the smallest of hamlets to the greatest of cities.  Let them show us at our best. They can go back to the other on July 5th.

Let's make it the one day of the year when we stand up and say with heart felt pride, "I am proud to be an American," and to paraphrase Lee Greenwood, I will gladly stand up, next to you and extol her on this one day. Make no mistake about it, I love this land we call the USA.  May she continue to enjoy God's blessing.

So it is that I invite both the rich and poor, the famous and obscure, the conservative and liberal, the learned and unlearned, the powerful and the weak, the healthy and the infirm, . . .  I invite us one and all to stand together and Pledge our Allegience to our flag, sing our national anthem and say as with one voice, "I am proud to be an American!"