Two hundred and Thirty Six years ago, a bunch of folks smarter than us (certainly smarter then me) managed to give the bird to mother England and chart a course for a people unmatched in the millennia of recorded history. The oppression and taxes too great, freedoms too few, these wise folks put all their chips on the table and doubled down for future generations. This country has since become a beacon of hope to people everywhere.

For all of our problems, squabbles, and sparring, this two hundred something year old experiment in Democracy is working and we should strive harder to make it better. Sure, there may be a small handful of countries that may seem, oh I dunno, nicer, due to the lottery of geography, they have not needed to do the heavy lifting of the world. They have not become the melting pot, the inventors, or the facilitator of PAX AMERICANA, nor the bastion of backwinders down the Canal. Having spent time in other countries, including behind the Iron Curtain for a brief stint, we are lucky beyond words by lottery of birth.

This week, embrace your freedoms, reflect on your good fortune, and please do an extra 10%. An extra ten as a parent, child, angler, and citizen. The hard part has been done, we need to do our part for the next 236 years.

Did you write that yourself? :devil2:

Amen and happy fourth.

-spence

Umm, yeh, cantcha tell?

Good fortune to you and your family across the Bay :tooth:

F me John... you missed your calling.

Well said is an understatement!

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
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.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Great .......... speechless >>>>>except >ENJOY WHAT YOU HAVE ?>?>?>? But a take a second to think about it .:buds:

USA love it or get the #^&#^&#^&#^& out ><><<><:smash:

. Having spent time in other countries, including behind the Iron Curtain for a brief stint, we are lucky beyond words by lottery of birth.



JohnR - the Manchurian webmaster?


And when they wrote the Declaration, they where prob. signing their death warrant.

JohnR - the Manchurian webmaster?


And when they wrote the Declaration, they where prob. signing their death warrant.


Nein

And you are correct, they did sign their death warrant in many case, others traded their fortunes for ships, armaments, and material.

Oh - and let us try to call it Independence Day, not 4th of July - more meaning and less commercialization ;)

...i'm just amazed at how radical that document is...even by today's standards...

The best part is the last paragraph, these guys had a lot of brains and even more sack!

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

Never forget all of those that have given the ultimate sacrifice so that we may be here today with the freedoms we hold sacred.

Many have gone, fewer have returned. Thank you all

Very well written! I happen to be in the middle of the book 1493 about Europeans coming to America and the global impact it had. Amazing. We fought hard to establish a toe hold in this country. Year after year thousands of Europeans were sent to Jamestown Virginia and surrounding areas and year after year almost 8 in 10 died within the first year. Starvation, malaria, Indians, etc.

Very well written! I happen to be in the middle of the book 1493 about Europeans coming to America and the global impact it had. Amazing. We fought hard to establish a toe hold in this country. Year after year thousands of Europeans were sent to Jamestown Virginia and surrounding areas and year after year almost 8 in 10 died within the first year. Starvation, malaria, Indians, etc.

The book "1493"? Great read.
Takes another look at the impact of Columbus.

Heres to the people that had the balls to rebel. Most people sat back and watched. It because of a few that we have the country we have today.

Heres to the people that had the balls to rebel. Most people sat back and watched. It because of a few that we have the country we have today.

However, today, rebellion? Baaaahhhh!

A time when people gave all to stand up for what they thought was right. Not what would make them rich , not what would get them elected and reelected , not what would put them on/maximize their take from the dole.

Now I think the idea is that if its good for me it must be "Right".

Anyway , God Bless America , Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

Truly inspiring. I wish there were more people built of that cloth today.

Great post! IT REALLY GIVE YOU A SENCE OF AMERICAN PRIDE..... NOW LETS GO BLOW SOME $#!T UP!

All I can say is God Bless this Country.

Thanks for posting that John. It really has gotten commercialized and I appreciated you reminding me of what today is all about.

One of the best days of the year (Memorial Day being the other) ... really makes me proud to be a member of this great nation ... truly remarkable men our founding fathers - few like them since ...

... yesterday taking the bus home from Boston, traffic was slow coming over the Zakim-Bunker Hill Bridge ... had perfect viewing of two American flags flying big, bold, bright and beautiful with the wind and sun just right ... so majestic, really takes my breath away ...

And Clammer ... you hit it right on the head ... if one lives here and has nothing good to say ... please go ...

sent donation to wounded warriors.watching history channel and revolution that stater it all.god bless the usa.of couse had to blast out lee greenwoods proud to be an american.