So what's it all about, really? You know the late night blast that lights up the neighborhood, the one that has all the dogs shivering and shaking under our beds? And then there's the flags, and the enormous mountains of burgers, ribs and beer, what's the whole celebration of July 4th really about?
As a certified, history teacher years ago, I may well have taken this opportunity to wax eloquently about the fore fathers and their search for freedom of worship and the perfect form of governance. While I still believe that to be the case, as one whose early years was in part from a Norman Rockwell setting, I believe today's Fourth of July celebration can be reduced to three salient elements in common for all.
A very wise super-powered, extraterrestrial, disguised as a mild, mannered reporter of many years past, Clark Kent well defined them through his mission statement: "To defend truth, justice and the American way." The "American Way" is the freedom we all enjoy that allows us to do pretty much whatever we want, whenever we want to do it, wherever we wish in this vast country.
It's freedom!
If you don't quite believe that's worth celebrating, then just imagine the exact opposite, a world of diminution and curtailment of all freedom by a government. Of course my freedom ends at the infringement of another's rights and rightly so. Another superman, the real one, the God-man put it this way: Love your neighbor as yourself.
What seems so simple a statement at first glance, radically causes us to self evaluate and limit our own actions through love and care for others without the need of governmental intervention. Many of you know that I have written three books of poetry.
Normally my poems are fairly light in subject and in verse, but with my growing concerns over the encroachment upon freedom and the abuse of truth and justice, I have written a few poems as a concise commentary on contemporary America, such as the one published on the homepage of my site.
To read now, click here!
This poem appears with another similar poem in my book, A Boomer Lifted. To purchase your own copy, or a copy for a friend or neighbor, visit my Amazon page today!