As ever, I always recommend you go to the source, rather than just take some pundit's word for it. Or government official. Or corporate spokesperson. Etc.
So, go read the Source Document for today's holiday - The Declaration of Independence.
How many among us were required to memorize the preamble? And even to discuss what it meant? My son had to - but I think the Leavenworth school system isn't quite as bound-up in PC multi-culti carp as some others...
From Memory, in honor of my teachers and the Founders:
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
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.
I'm exercising my 1st Amendment right at the moment. Shortly, some friends will be coming over to exercise their Second Amendment rights at the New Castle. It seems appropriate, as these two, in a sense, secure the others.
I am mindful of the rather bloody-minded Tom Jefferson:
God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
I'm thinking, in context, Mister Jefferson sees the 2nd Amendment as an Individual right.
Regardless, I'll close by honoring two men. One for whom the flag was more than just a bit of cotton bunting, Former Marine Charles Lindberg, who passed June 25th.
Charles W. Lindberg, one of the U.S. Marines who raised the first American flag over Iwo Jima during World War II, has died. He was 86. Lindberg died Sunday at Fairview Southdale hospital in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina, said John Pose, director of the Morris Nilsen Funeral Home in Richfield, which is handling Lindberg’s funeral.Lindberg spent decades explaining that it was his patrol, not the one captured in the famous Associated Press photograph by Joe Rosenthal, that raised the first flag as U.S. forces fought to take the Japanese island. In the late morning of Feb. 23, 1945, Lindberg fired his flame-thrower into enemy pillboxes at the base of Mount Suribachi and then joined five other Marines fighting their way to the top. He was awarded the Silver Star for bravery.
“Two of our men found this big, long pipe there,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2003. “We tied the flag to it, took it to the highest spot we could find and we raised it. “Down below, the troops started to cheer, the ship’s whistles went off, it was just something that you would never forget,” he said. “It didn’t last too long, because the enemy started coming out of the caves.”
And Specialist James Adair, a Fort Riley soldier, who died last week, trying to give the Iraqis the chance that the Continental Line gave us:
Specialist. James L. Adair, 26, died of wounds sustained when his vehicle struck an improvised explosive device June 29 in Baghdad, Iraq.
Adair was an infantryman assigned to 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division. His home of record is Carthage, Texas.
He entered the Army in September 2005 and began serving with the 1st Infantry Division. in February 2006. This was his first deployment in support of the Global War on Terrorism.
To date, 116 Fort Riley Soldiers have been killed while serving in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
Now is the time at Castle Argghhh! when we dance. In Memoriam.
Be safe out there people.
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