To most Americans in this day and age, the 4th of July is nothing more than yet another holiday where you don't have to work, you can sit around and drink beer, eat hot dogs and hamburgers, and shoot off fireworks. To most retailers in our nation, it's an excuse for yet another sale in the relentless drive to make money, to garner a bigger share of the market than the competition.
To the folks who are serving in the military and those that have served in the past, the holiday means something completely different. We don't get the day off to party and celebrate; to us, the 4th of July is just another day on the calendar, one on which we get up, put on our uniforms, and go to work like we do every day - protecting the freedoms that everyone else is celebrating, the freedoms that our Founding Fathers put so much on the line for.
Just what did our Founding Fathers put on the line, you ask? Well, how about 'everything?' And when I say 'everything,' I mean just that. Their livelihoods, their property, their families, their lives - everything.
See, this is what the people of our nation today have either forgotten or, sad to say, have not been taught. Two hundred and thirty eight years ago the people of the colonies that would later become the United States of America were fed up with the way they were being governed and mistreated by the King of England, and they decided that enough was enough. A courageous group of men got together and discussed what they were going to do about it, and the only decision that they thought was feasible was revolution. They would rebel against the government that was oppressing them, even though they knew it was going to be a long, bloody fight that they most likely would not win. But to a man they all agreed that they would rather die as free men than live as subjects to an uncaring King. Thomas Jefferson then wrote a document that they all agreed to sign, all of the representatives of the 13 American colonies, a document that served as formal notice to the King that the colonies were fed up and were separating themselves in every way from England and the Crown. The document, of course, was the Declaration of Independence, and on July 4, 1776 a total of fifty-six delegates from the 13 colonies affixed their signatures to the bottom of the document, and America was born.
All fifty-six of them knew that they were signing what could turn out to be their death warrants, but they went ahead and signed anyway. They knew that the Crown would react by invading the colonies and trying to subjugate them by force, and they all knew that the first people who would be the targets of the invading armies would be the "ringleaders" - the men who signed the Declaration. They knew that they stood a very good chance of having British troops come onto their land, invade their homes and take them and their families prisoner, after which they would loot the property and then burn it to the ground. They all knew that the punishment for revolution was the gallows, and that no one in their families would be spared.
But they also knew that NOT to sign meant subjecting themselves to a life of oppresion, so they signed despite the fact that it could be the end of them and everyone they loved and held dear.
This, friends and neighbors, is patriotism. This, without a shadow of a doubt, is courage.
Our Founding Fathers put everything they knew and loved on the line to secure their freedom and the freedom of the nation, and the men and women in uniform today continue to do that. Our Founding Fathers risked their lives and the lives of their families to shake off the yoke of oppression and make America a free state, and our men and women in uniform risk their lives every day to protect and preserve the freedom that so many Americans now take for granted. The old saying is that you don't really appreciate what you have until it's gone; I just hope that it never comes to that when you're talking about the freedom that we as Americans enjoy.
I, like millions of other Americans, will be celebrating the 4th of July today; in a short while I'll be drinking beer, eating hot dogs and hamburgers, and shooting off fireworks just like everyone else, but with me there will be a significant difference. With every blossom of color in the sky and with every 'boom' that accompanies it, I'll be thinking of the sacrifices our Founding Fathers and all who fought for our country's freedom made, of the sacrifices I made in my time in uniform, but most of all about the sacrifices being made today by our nation's military to preserve the freedom which cost so many so much so long ago.
I hope you'll do the same.
Oh, and those fifty six signers of the Declaration of Independence? Nine of them were Masons.
IHC
No comments:
Post a Comment