Happy Independence Day

 The Mad Toddler is sick or teething. Either way he is running a fever and not feeling well. Poor baby. Looks like a quiet 4th for me!

Tomorrow is the 4th of July. One of the beauties of our country is our freedom - freedom to not even like our country. There are so many things about the US that make me frustrated or angry, but so much I love, too.

We have freedom. Freedom like many places in the world have never known, or have only known for a short time.
I have been privileged to travel to countries where freedom was not the same. Paraguay in 1986, which was under the regime of Streossner. Crossing military checkpoints as we traveled around Paraguay. Witnessing the poverty of the majority of the population, watching those who did not carry their national id get taken off of the bus when the military stopped to check. Glimpses of life in Argentina and Bolivia. And again in 1993, a trip to Slovakia, which had gained its independence only in January of that year. My host family served me white flour buns for breakfast. I was told this was a treat that they could not afford for the family, but gave me as the honored guest.
Not that all these places are necessarily the same today, but the point is I have known freedom my whole life. I can, and do, criticize my government. I can and do, exercise my right to vote (never forgetting that women were once denied this freedom). I can, and do teach my children the rights and duties of being a citizen of this nation.


Here, on the eve of the celebration of our country's ideals, are some of the words of that precious document, the Declaration of Independence.


When 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.