At the risk of sounding corny. God bless America. This weekend marks the celebration of July 4th, 1776, our founding day of Independence from the British crown here in the new frontier called America. A free country ensconced in Liberty and individual freedom and responsibility attached to that freedom. A new concept of Western thought; bringing the Old World into a new era marked by a Bill of Rights.
Independence Day brought the dawn of a new thought about how we are governed as a sovereign Nation, under God. With liberty and justice for all who accept the personal responsibility and privilege of that credo. Shirking off the colonial monarchy of the English King, we took on a brave new mantle of independence and the challenge to govern ourselves as private citizens endowed with the freedom given us by our Creator. This new idea, springing in part out of the ancient Greek philosophers, and fused with a deep sense of reverence for the God of the Bible, birthed a Nation unlike any other in the history, at least recorded history, of the world.
Out of this 245-year-old declaration, we have witnessed great progress and invention, the fruit of our individual ingenuity. It has inspired the rest of the world, and brought civilization up in important ways. I urge you to read Steven Pinker’s book, Enlightenment Now, which sets forth the case decisively with charts and graphs showing the tremendous progress made by our world civilizations in all the pertinent areas over the past century. He tracks the progress from the Enlightenment forward; and the affect that free thought and invention have had on mortality, poverty, quality of life, food production, economic prosperity, literacy and education, etc. etc. It is an uplifting treatise based on reason and facts; almost a manual on how humanity has been lifted up. It is an acknowledgment of the part that Western Civilization has played in this lifting up. And, I dare say, the US of A has been in the lead with its free market economy and individual freedom to create a culture of openness to ideas, inventions, and freedom of thought.
So, this weekend, we celebrate our 245 years of liberty, albeit a delicate and precipitous display at this point: by this I mean, we are at a definitive crossroads in the history of this Nation, and of the world. We are witnessing another call to stand up strong for an ideology which is now being challenged greatly by the forces against freedom and individual responsibility for that freedom. I cannot emphasize this point enough: Individual Freedom, and Individual Responsibility for that Freedom.
Up until this 21st Century, we have strived to remain “One Nation Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all”. This new millenium has born witness to the perpetual gnawing encroachment of the one hundred year old Marxist revolutionary idea which is antithetical to that of individual freedom. We are faced today with yet another challenge; dare I say, a division within our country which threatens civil war. We are presented, as a Nation, with two ideologically opposed philosophies which cannot be reconciled in the center any longer.
The socialist (Marxist) ideology supports tyranny and the collective rule of the State over the Individual. This concept has been enticing to the young idealists of the past century. Fed by the revolutionaries here in the US in the ’60’s, it ignores the inevitable morphing of State rule into the deadly disaster of nihilation and destruction which dictatorship brings. (Hitler, Stalin, Mao and currently Xi and Jong-un, among others)
If we continue to allow this opposing ideology to erode and overcome our Constitution and our Bill of Rights here in America, we will lose our freedom and individual power over our everyday lives. This will be the end of prosperity and creative invention. We, and the rest of the world, will suffer greatly if we allow the demise of our Constitutional Republic.
We fought the War of Independence from the British crown in the 17th century. Now, we stand and fight for our freedom from tyranny once again in the 21st century. Albeit it be manifest in a cloak of opacity, in a cultural nightmare of chaos and disrespect for our Constitution and individual rights. Never the less, we find ourselves challenged to fight like hell, bravely and boldly, in order to keep it.
God Bless America.
Clemland in Paradise 