A Day of Mourning
July 4th, 2009Sitting outside on the night before the Fourth of July, the air is strangely muted. In years past, the sounds of a whistling Saturn Rocket Launcher or the hissing and pop of a bottle-rocket, or the brilliance and thunder of a mortar would almost continually reverberate through one’s ears.
Perhaps it is a sign of the economic times that people can ill afford the luxury of spending precious wealth on paper and gunpowder. The bust has literally taken the boom out of the season.
But something else is missing. Armed with a deep understanding of what this historic date defines, I have in recent years met the Fourth with great excitement and profound reflection. It also marks the day that my inner child jubilantly escapes with firecrackers, rockets, and aerial bombs in hand.
Lost in the town parades, festivals, and a backyard cookout is the document from which our celebrations were born. This special day is about me, the individual, and not a community, state, or national government. The Declaration of Independence states:
“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.”
Furthermore, the next sentence declares that the sole purpose of government is to secure my natural rights. Our national summer party totally misses the emphasis of the celebration, which is liberty and superiority of the individual over the state.
Tonight the fires of freedom that were lit over two hundred and thirty years ago are no more than a smoldering ember. This evening I do not have the right to travel freely by air without first showing my papers and allowing my person and effects to be searched without a warrant. My money cannot be shifted in manners that I deem necessary without government suspicion and warnings. The lights in my house and the water used to flush my toilet are now or will soon be a matter of government preference. In the coming years, my choice to seek medical help to perhaps save my life or another’s will not exist. I can’t even blow up little pieces of paper and gunpowder without fear of the police.
My certain unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have vanquished. The Fourth of July has become a showcase for government. Under the guise of freedom, hometown parades are a pageantry of blaring police cars, honking emergency equipment, and military regiments. In larger gathering the air overhead may be filled with the flying might of the state. As night falls, the darkened sky lights up and crackles with government fireworks while the individual can be criminalized for the same act.
As in previous years, my wife dressed the front of the house in red, white and blue bunting along with the American flag waving from its pole extending from the porch. Considering the path our country has taken, the sight sickens me. Though the flag has always represented the state, today it clearly stands for tyranny.
For the first time on the Fourth of July, I can find no reason to celebrate.