This July 4th (2019)
As I write this, Nike has withdrawn a shoe fashioned after the Betsy Ross Flag because the NFL player who elected to kneel during the playing of the national anthem says it offended him.
The Democrat candidates for 2020 are all whining about the expense of the celebration in Washington D.C. but have promised to give all illegal aliens free healthcare and have gone from “no crisis” to “manufactured crisis” to “concentration camps” to “drinking out of toilets”.
The 9th Circuit has predictably ruled the President may not use Department of Defense funds to defend the border.
Bernie Sanders says government is the solution to every problem and promises to raise everyone’s taxes to expand it, while promising free college tuition for all.
The San Francisco School Board is going to spend $600,000 to paint over a historical mural of George Washington’s life at GEORGE WASHINGTON High School because they have deemed it racist and degrading to black and Native Americans.
Antifa beats up a gay, conservative reporter in Portland and the main stream media apologies for or defends them.
The Supreme Court has ruled that a question about citizenship that has been on every census up until Obama may not reinstated for the 2020 census.
The President’s son is spat upon in a restaurant, the White House spokesperson is jeered out of another, with no consequences. Many in the public eye condone the actions as patriotic.
You can’t make this stuff up!
Meanwhile, we’re supposed to be troubled that tanks are going to be on display on the National Mall! God forbid we honor those who made them, who operate them, who defend our freedom, the freedom that permits Leftist to spit their anti-American venom.
I grew up in Europe as a teenager in the 60’s. I helped introduce skateboarding to France with a wood Hobie board on the plaza at the Palais de Chaillot opposite the Eiffel Tower. I was in France the day we landed on the moon. I played baseball in the park in Paris. I was there during the ’68 riots. I was there during the Peace Talks. For several years I covertly worked for the U.S. Embassy, trying to advocate against drugs in my school so that American kids would never have to face French justice or see the inside of a French courtroom or jail.
I was proud to be American, and when our family came home in the summer, I cherished a McDonald’s hamburger, fries and Coke (and change for $1, remember?) and wondered what was in Jack in the Box’s “secret sauce” that made their burgers so tasty and distinctive, and was thankful for the “Land of the Big PX” as we used to call it, and round doorknobs, and deodorant, and Noxzema shaving cream, and Converse Chuck Taylor basketball shoes, and Sugar Smacks, and BASEBALL, and REAL football, and real madras shirts with button down collars and fruit loops.
It’s one of life’s truisms that “we crave that which is out of our reach and have disdain for the things we can’t get rid of”. Having had so much of America out of my reach 9 months out of the year, I learned to yearn for and love it, especially juxtaposed against the many ofttimes peculiar European countries which I visited. And, by way of contrast, I grew to hate the oppressive, boot-on-the-neck, quasi-socialist, government-run society around me there.
On this July 4th I’m grateful to be American, to honor those who lived, suffered and died for our freedom, beginning with those Brits who vowed never to be “subjects” anymore, but “citizens” of what became, and thankfully still is, the greatest nation on Earth and the greatest force for good in the history of mankind.
May God bless the U.S.A., particularly now as the assault on everything it stands for intensifies and Good and Evil line up in opposition.
