Guest Post by Eric Peters
The Fourth of July has become like Christmas – a kind of ersatz celebration with forms but not much significance.
What is it we’re celebrating, exactly?
A historical event – the successful separation of the colonies from the British empire.
The secession of the colonies. Their rejection of the arbitrary authority of the British king and parliament.
Good for the colonists.
What about us?
Do we not also live under the authority of arbitrary government? A president and Congress?
An endless conga line of bureaucrats and apparatchiks?
Sometimes, we get to vote for some of them. Our vote made effectively meaningless by the thousands – the hundreds of thousands and tens of millions of other votes.
The king or parliament would issue an edict and the colonists were legally required to obey it. Are we not legally required to obey whatever edicts the Congress pass and president decrees?
Can anyone explain the difference?
Moral law no longer governs. Only the law. And that can be anything. There are no limits whatsoever on what may be done to us; only that a law be enacted (and not even that).
We are bound to obey, regardless.
The king’s men could simply take our things, search our persons on whim. The colonists objected to such treatment and cited such treatment among the reasons for their decision to secede.
Is it not a fact that the government’s men (and women) can simply take our things? Search us on whim? Have you traveled recently?
Can anyone explain the difference?
The colonists under the king and parliament could own property. Meaning really own it. They were not required to send annual/regular payments in to the king in order to be permitted to remain in homes for which they’d paid or carriages they’d purchased.
We are.
The colonists – under the king and parliament – had an unquestioned right to own and bear (carry on their persons) firearms. Without permission.
Are we allowed such freedom?
The king and parliament did not concern themselves with the colonists’ “safety.” If a colonists wished, he could ride his horse as fast as he liked, eat what he liked, smoke what he liked. No authority pestered him about his choices. He was not told with whom he must do business, or forced to build his house a certain way or forbidden from planting a vegetable garden on his property. He was not compelled to purchase insurance of any kind whatsoever.
How about today?
In most parts of the Land of the Free, you and I are not even free to purchase fireworks to celebrate our supposed freedom. We’re allowed “safe” sparklers and such. But nothing that flies or explodes. To possess or use such constitutes a crime in most states.
The irony of this is lost on most people.
So, celebrating our freedoms strikes me as hollow and pathetic. Like holiday greetings instead of merry Christmas!
I plan to stay home and read a book.
“Our vote made effectively meaningless by the thousands – the hundreds of thousands and tens of millions of other votes.”
Or maybe the vote is made meaningless by the obvious fact that the votes don’t even get counted, but the desired totals are announced anyway, sometimes even before the votes are cast.
We brits were not so bad after all 😉
Bad enough, at least George III’s ministers were. Not as bad as our current rulers, though.
And maybe a headache is not as bad as a severed leg…
“I plan to stay home and read a book.” ——- Eric Peters
Well, Eric, you might be missing the point.
A celebration can be about current events … such as, when you celebrate someone’s birthday.
Or, is can be about an event in the past . For example, Christians “celebrate” Christ’s death/resurrection via Communion. But, they are not so much “celebrating” as they are remembering, for Jesus said — ” …. and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me’.”
Eric is correct, there isn’t much about America as it is TODAY which gives cause for celebration.
But, we all do a disservice to ourselves by not remembering America as it originally was. For it is in remembering that hope for a restoration is kept alive.
@ Thaisleeze ….lol
Do you think that Her Majesty The Queen will take us back if we beg forgiveness? We can start to convert our cars to left hand drive and teach ourselves to spell words correctly and all that.
The only thing I’ll miss are the hotdogs.
Well said Stucky.
Let us all remember that, GOD GUNS and whiskey made America Great.
I’ve always preferred the phrase “War of Independence” over “The American Revolution|” for the reason that Colonial Americans were not oppressed by the British. The list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence are, by the standards of the time, remarkably picayune with only the quartering of British troops in private homes a genuine outrage. Being taxed to pay for British troops and the Royal Navy was certainly reasonable less than a decade after the French and Indian War and Americans were, afterall, subjects of the British Crown.
West Indian rum makers did pull a coup when they got Parliament to allow duty free imports to the ‘colonies’ to the detriment of American corn whiskey distillers but again, as British territory, it made sense to allow duty free trade something our own nascent Constitution recognized. It was also the case that duties and tariffs were how governments financed themselves in the 18th century and that didn’t change with Independence.
Whole new meaning now, independence from tyranny the original. Hot dogs, fireworks, picnics, and a long weekend are the new baseline. Creeping tyranny is government at its worse, government shrinking is freedom growing. Which side will prevail? We are about to find out!