American Independence Day?

America has been celebrating it's independence from British rule since 1777 although this day wasn't officially called "Independence Day" until about 1791.

I find it ironic that so many Americans continue to celebrate a holiday they evidently do not value or understand.

Take the fireworks for example. Why do people celebrate the 4th of July with fireworks? The fireworks are a symbol of the rockets, cannon fire, and of the gun fire proving we were the still in the battle for our freedom. It was a win all or lose all proposition.

America would either win it's complete freedom from King George or the colonist would be under a "heavier boot" from the British. There was no going back, no saying "I'm tired, lets just wait a while longer", or "this whole ordeal is more than I bargained for, why don't we take another vote before we continue with this blood bath."

What has happened to the American people that has made them forget their past? Made them forget their history? Where is the pride in the sacrifice of so many ancestors?

We are a sorry lot. We celebrate a holiday that should condemn us for our weakness. We have voluntarily put back on the chains so many men bled and successfully fought to remove.

If the people we descend from, those of us who have lineages going back to the American Revolution, were to stand before us today, would they pat us on the back and say "Job well done!" Or would they turn from us in disappointment, even shame at how we have protected the gift of liberty and freedom they handed to us?

We did not earn it, they did. We did not bleed for it, they did, and we will not hand it over to our children like they did. Instead we hand our children heavier chains than we wear and do it with a smile!

We have no business celebrating Independence tomorrow, for we are not independent. We are very dependent but not on King George. We are dependent on Washington DC.

We have handed the responsibility for our freedoms and the duties of defending it over to people with no conscience or morality. Since the 1960s we have allowed the people who lead us to be the instruments of our demise.

We have allowed the courts to tell us we don't need God and faith in our lives or in our schools or in our laws.

Our Founders would never believe we could fall so far and so fast. They knew it was man's relationship to God and man's placement in that relationship, which told them they had no choice but to become independent of a system which did not respect this relationship. The British system was evidence of how the King saw man in the relationship. God--->King---->then everyone else.

Here is a portion of "An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport, at their request,on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1837." by John Quincy Adams.

...At the root of all this there was a plausible theory of sovereignty, and unlimited power in Parliament, conflicting with the vital principle of English Freedom, that taxation and representation are inseparable, and that taxation without representation is a violation of the right of property. Here was a conflict between two first principles of government, resulting from a defect in the British Constitution: the principle that sovereign power in human Government is in its nature unlimited: and the principle that property can lawfully be taxed only with the consent of its owner. Now these two principles, carried out into practice, are utterly irreconcilable with each other. The lawyers of Great Britain held them both to be essential principles of the British Constitution. – In their practical application, the King and Parliament and people of Great Britain, appealed for the right to tax the Colonies to the unlimited and illimitable sovereignty of the Parliament. – The Colonists appealed to the natural right of property, and the articles of the Great Charter. The collision in the application of these two principles was the primitive cause of the severance of the North American Colonies, from the British Empire. The grievances alleged in the Declaration of Independence were all secondary causes, amply sufficient to justify before God and man the separation itself; and that resolution, to the support of which the fifty-five Representatives of the One People of the United Colonies pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, after passing through the fiery ordeal of a six years war, was sanctioned by the God of Battles, and by the unqualified acknowledgment of the defeated adversary.

...In recurring to those principles, let us remark,

First, that the People of the thirteen Colonies announced themselves to the world, and solemnly bound themselves, with an appeal to God, to be One People. And this One People, by their Representatives, declared the United Colonies free and independent States.

Secondly, they declared the People, and not the States, to be the only legitimate source of power; and that to the People alone belonged the right to institute, to alter, to abolish, and to re-institute government. And hence it follows, that as the People of the separate Colonies or States formed only parts of the One People assuming their station among the powers of the earth, so the People of no one State could separate from the rest, but by a revolution, similar to that by which the whole People had separated themselves from the People of the British Islands, nor without the violation of that solemn covenant, by which they bound themselves to support and maintain the United Colonies, as free and independent States. ...

Thirdly, the Declaration of Independence announced the One People, assuming their station among the powers of the earth, as a civilized, religious, and Christian People, – acknowledging themselves bound by the obligations, and claiming the rights, to which they were entitled by the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.

How far we have fallen. We have allowed God to be removed from our government and now our liberties are being removed from us.

How can I celebrate what is now a lie? I mourn instead for the death of a great nation.

I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion. -- Patrick Henry