Today is Independence Day which should be the standard against which we hold ourselves, as citizens of this country and as citizens of the world, every day and not some kind of an excuse to get 20% off at the Mall, buy a keg, and have a barbecue with a grill that's crying like a fire in the sun.
A hundred and sixty-plus years ago we were still struggling with the aftermath of a fratricidal war that ended slavery in the USA, and have tried, fitfully, at times to move on with ourselves and our lives.
In many ways who we are now is what we were then as that war propelled us fully into the Industrial Age, whose Revolution had begun twenty years earlier, and helped move us towards a more open and larger engagement with the rest of the world until we had achieved Pax Americana, that started some eighty years after Appomattox.
Many have sacrificed much so that we can be who we are--and many are away from home today, far from home, because those who wish us harm don't take holidays and as a famous Chicagoan (no, not Ernie Banks) so eloquently explained decades ago, you get more with kind words and a gun than you do with kind words alone.
Men and women in uniform, no matter their personal politics and feelings, would agree that growing faint when confronted by the evil in the world will not deter or distract it. It must be confronted or it will consume everyone and everything, including those who think fretting about our democracy is more noble than struggling to protect it.
As you enjoy this holiday, please spare a moment for all those, past, present, and future, whose service and sacrifice make it possible. And I'll meet you further on up the road.
-bill kenny
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