Posted on 07/04/2016 5:04:58 PM PDT by vannrox
Submitted by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,
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.
Sobering.
To me, it commemorates a hope and a philosophy more than it commemorates a current state of affairs.
American freedom has been abused, with results to the ill before God.
However this does not mean that We The People are so far gone as to never be able to learn a lesson. Only God has that score. We can surmise, but a wave of new faith in the Lord is something that is not merited or earned but can be arranged by the Lord according to His grace. The conventional odds makers have no say in the question.
We could try another revolt but of course this time, they have billions of rounds (bought with our money), nerve gas (same comment), nuclear weapons (there’s that comment again) and a mercenary army that owes its allegiance to the Federal “state” which now declares its own legitimacy, instead of being the clearinghouse of the States, United.
In other words, we are the slaves of a new monarchist state...the federal bureaucracy, which is beholden to no one...except itself.
I guess it may be some consolation that in the geographic heart of America, the policies are pretty generous as to what kinds of (Chinese, to be sure, but right now the Chinese are probably among the least of our griefs) fireworks may be lit off.
I think in terms of setting them off to an idea. America had been great. America could be great again. It needs the power of God to do so. Will it send kneemails to Heaven and cease from pride in its own isolated accomplishments? I pray it will.
But that stuff is only physical. It cannot reach a soul that is unwilling to bow to it.
God is a mountain mover, both spiritual and (where necessary) physical.
Bttt.
5.56mm
Nothing to add. Bump.
If Hillary is treated as a normal decent candidate for President, we’ve lost our country.
Good article. We are serfs.
I look around and see all these wonderful Americans at the park, enjoying the summer weather, eating, waiting for fireworks. It is for them we celebrate. For our soldiers all over the world. We need to make Independence day real again. I want to do it for these beautiful people.
An interesting thought experiment would be to compare 240 years later whether the Average American citizen has more freedom than the average British subject.
According to the so called Human Freedom Index, the UK ranks significantly higher than the US en it comes to fredom. I would counter that with the observation that freedom is individual specific. For example, gun freedoms are much more important to me than probably most Brits or Americans so of course the US is much freer from my perspective. But on other measures, the US does seem to lag.
The sad thing for me is that we can’t make the knock-it-out-of-the-park argument anymore that Americans are the freest people on earth. And I don’t like that one bit.
It sounds as though we may be celebrating Don’t Offend Foreign Freeloaders Day.
Commitment to God and His blessings are the root of it.
I don’t know where either Britain or the USA are making a stellar show of this at the moment. What is better, a rotten apple or a rotten orange?
I’m celebrating the last 4th of July with Obama and his gang sullying the White House.
Without going into the lowlights, it has been eight long and hurtful years for our great country.
And it was especially hurtful on this day, so good riddance to bad rubbish.
Not even close....and pretty odd coming from someone who posts the commie red Chinese flag on their profile page
“No longer governed by moral law.....” Since the fall man has NEVER been governed by moral law. We have had governments of men, some kings, some dictators, and here in this special land a constitution....pOur fundamental problem is was and always will be we are human. Humans like power. That leads to corruption.
"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 Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."
F R E E D O M ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
THAT’S WHAT IT MEANS.
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