A Letter From Adams...

Happy Birthday, America!

Today is the 4th of July!  America's birthday!  Our 243rd!  The day we celebrate each and every year with hot dogs and hamburgers and BBQs and beer and the beach and parades and fireworks.  Just like our President John Adams admonished us to do so many, many years ago.

I'm reminded of the letter he wrote to his wife, Abigale, on July 3rd, 1776, the day after the Declaration was originally signed that fateful day back in Philadelphia (yes, we should be celebrating this amazing Day on the 2nd!).  It stated in part:

"I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding Generations, as the Great Anniversary Festival.  It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance, by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parades, with Shews (sic), Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one end of the Continent to the other from this Time forward forevermore."

For those of us who love the freedom that Declaration guaranteed us, and the lifestyle we thereby enjoy, this is our penultimate day each year.  The day we love above all.  The day we choose to celebrate the founding of the Grand Experiment.  An experiment that's given us the longest surviving democracy in the history of the world.

Yet, there will be some who are not moved by this occasion.  Some who will choose to focus only on America's remaining inadequacies.  Some who will refuse to be uplifted by the trials and tribulations of the millions of Americans who have gone before us and plowed and sown the fields we now reap.  Who gave their lives in the pursuit of that freedom which we now so richly enjoy.  The very same freedom that makes millions try and come to our country each and every year.  

So, to those out there who want to blame America for whatever their individual shortcomings might be, I suggest you go outside tonight and watch the "bombs bursting in air."  Perhaps that will soften your heart a bit in memory of the suffering of all those who have bought and paid for today's cheeseburgers and beer with their blood...