Happy Fourth of July! 

Happy Independence Day!

For me, as a relatively new American citizen, July 4th is all about three things – fireworks, food, and the constitution. The latter being the sole item of complete importance. As I see dictatorship and outright hegemony becoming the rule of the day, I feel compelled to re-state what made this country great in the first place. And to be clear, the days of America as a power and influencer is on the decline…once we corrupt our basic rights, we no longer have any moral authority.

I have always been so proud that the rights to liberty and happiness – yes happiness – was the base of our government. These days, I shake my head and pray that this sentiment will be still at our core twenty years from now. Here are  some of the sentiments from the original declaration of independence:

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

I won’t repeat the whole document here, but I thought it important to repeat the words that formed the basis of this country and the sole reasons we rose to greatness – a greatness that is rapidly dissipating amidst all the hate mongering and terrible labelling that now starts at the highest, and now, these days, the lowest office. 

Happy Fourth of July!

Cheers,

Jianne