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Home > Blogs > West Chester News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > July > 04 > Entry
Independence Day thoughts
Fairfield Echo/Liberty Twp. Pulse-Journal reporter Eric Schwartzberg got me thinking about today’s topic with a comment he made in the newsroom two days ago.
What would 7/4/08 be like if, rather than referring to it simply as “Fourth of July,” we went back to calling the holiday “Independence Day” and observed it as such?
Today, for some people it seems, is about the great American holiday traditions: eating and drinking to excess, buying a bunch of unneeded crap and probably spending at least part of the day watching some kind of sport on TV. Since it’s a summer holiday, one could add the tradition of blowing up fireworks and the occasional garage to the list.
I’m sure the founding fathers would be proud.
When was the last time you read the Declaration of Independence, or the preamble to the Constitution? How about the Bill of Rights? I haven’t looked at any of those since high school - today is a good time to remedy that.
Maybe instead of consuming to excess, we could spend part of this national holiday looking back over those documents, to see how they apply today, and to get a sense of what the original vision statement for the U.S.A. looked like.
Maybe some of you will do this and come away pleased with how things are going. Maybe some of you will sit up and say, ‘this isn’t right; we’ve got to make some changes, and quickly!’
Wherever you fall on that spectrum, at least you’ll be a little more aware of the process.
With so many distractions in modern life, it’s all too easy to participate in government by proxy. I say today’s the best day of the year to do something about that.
Imagine: an Independence Day filled with people learning, thinking and talking about the great experiment called America. What could be more patriotic than that?
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