Happy Independence Day! *Weekend Open Thread*

Happy Fourth of July, friends! This is such an amazing holiday for our nation, the 239th we have celebrated in our great country.

As we celebrate this foundational, formative holiday, I cannot help but think about our forebears, and what they would think of where this country is today. What would they think of Obama’s numerous Executive Orders, his relaxing of the borders, his granting rights to so many in this country illegally, or Obamacare and its myriad impacts on this country and its citizenry, or the recent Supreme Court decisions? What would they think about the way Congress now conducts itself, like Sen. Reid failing to do his basica duty of passing a budget every year lest it embarrass the President, or Reid’s attacking private citizens from the floor of the Senate? Or the double speak of too many politicians on both sides of the aisle? What would they think of anarchists wanting to disarm police officers in New York City and highlight their point by burning American flags?

And then there is the way in which the media have become a propaganda arm for the President and his party. We don’t need to wonder what they would say about that. We know from Thomas Jefferson himself what he had to say about the importance of the Fourth Estate. Here are just a few of Jefferson’s statements on this matter:

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.” –Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787. ME 6:57

“The press [is] the only tocsin of a nation. [When it] is completely silenced… all means of a general effort [are] taken away.” –Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, Nov 29, 1802. (*) ME 10:341

“The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.” –Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491

“The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.” –Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384

“The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.” –Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632

“Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786. […] (Click here to read more of Jefferson’s quotes on this topic.)

Uh, yeah – I don’t think we have to wonder what he and the other Founders would think of the New York Times, or NBC, or any of the other mainstream stations or presses these days. “Free” is not a word I would associate with any of them with the exception of a very few true journalists left in this country.

And then there is our Declaration of Independence, for which many, many Americans fought and died, including some of my forebears in North Carolina, including kin who signed the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in 1775. Just imagine the courage, the bravery, the determination, and the conviction it must have taken for the Colonies to make that decision to declare their Independence from the powerful British Empire. That they were SUCCESSFUL in that endeavor is astonishing, and continues to awe and inspire many. At least it does me, and I suspect many of y’all here.

But if you can stomach it, check out the responses of some of our fellow Americans to questions related to our Independence. It will make you fully understand how it is that we have some of the elected officials we do:

Yikes. Isn’t that incredibly disturbing? What in the sam hill is wrong with people? I am no spring chicken, but I sure as heck can remember from whom the Colonies declared independence and when! Good grief, and a big sigh, too. This kind of thing explains SO much, doesn’t it?

But I don’t want to leave you on that thoroughly disturbing note, not when there is so much GOOD about this country. The freedoms we hold are precious, and we must protect them. I want to share some inspirational quotes on Freedom (h/t my cousin for reminding me of these). From Brainy Quotes:

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.
Thomas Jefferson

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
George Washington

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
Robert A. Heinlein

What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man. – Robert Green Ingersoll (Click here for more quotes on Freedom.)

I want to wish you all a very happy Fourth of July, our Independence Day, and my brother’s birthday, as an added bonus! I hope your day and your weekend are filled with patriotism, good food, friends, family, and of course, fireworks.

I want to leave you with one of the most beautiful renditions I have heard of this hymn. The music is beautiful, the video is powerful, and if you download it (iTunes), the proceeds go to Wounded Warrior Project. Oh, and as you can see, one of the performers is former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice. Here is “Amazing Grace”:

Happy Fourth of July, my friends. This is your Weekend Open Thread.

Tags: Condoleeza Rice, Fourth of July, George Washington, Independence Day, Thomas Jefferson, Wounded Warrior Project