Happy Birthday USA
As we celebrate our freedoms, let’s remember how hard we fought to arrive at this moment.
Celebrating our freedoms, particularly on Independence Day, but all year long involves reflecting on the sacrifices made for liberty, recognizing the rights and responsibilities that come with freedom, and striving for a more perfect union. It's a time to appreciate the freedoms we have, like speech, religion, and the ability to pursue happiness, while also acknowledging the ongoing work needed to ensure these freedoms are extended to all.
Individual Liberties: Freedom encompasses the right to express oneself, practice one's faith, and live without undue constraints on one's choices.
Ongoing Pursuit: The fight for freedom is ongoing. It requires constant vigilance and a commitment to justice and equality for all.
Responsibility: Freedom comes with responsibility. Citizens are encouraged to participate in civic life, hold leaders accountable, and work towards a more just and equitable society.
Unity: Ultimately, celebrating freedom is about recognizing the shared values and aspirations that unite Americans, regardless of their backgrounds or beliefs.
As we celebrate our freedoms, let’s remember how hard we fought to arrive at this moment.
Happy Birthday USA!
The Fourth of July, formerly known as Independence Day, marks the birth of our country, the great United States of America. It is welcomed each year with parades, summer picnics and great displays of fireworks. What are we really celebrating besides a “birthday party” and summer? Much, much more, which today is seldom mentioned or even remembered. It is the day of independence and the official “birth” of the United States of America. It marks the liberation of its peoples, the original 13 colonies, from the demanding constraints and heavy taxation of British rule under King George III and his extreme Parliament.
One needs to remember how the 13 colonies struggled under this punitive foreign rule and where the 50 states of our United States are today because of our founding fathers. The USA: beacon of liberty and justice for the world to emulate. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of The Declaration, spent 17 long days crafting the document for the Second Continental Congress in which he carefully spelled out why the 13 colonies regarded themselves free and independent states, and no longer subject to British rule or taxation under a king.
Through the years, The Declaration of Independence has proven to be an influential and globally significant impact statement on human rights…much more than an old document for a birthday party. Abraham Lincoln viewed it as the moral standard to which the United States should strive and considered it a statement of principles, ones through which the constitution of the United States should be interpreted.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (2nd sentence of Declaration).
Powerful words echoed through 249 years of our country’s history and still relevant today. Ultimately, celebrating on the Fourth of July or Independence Day is about recognizing the shared values and aspirations that unite all Americans, regardless of their backgrounds or beliefs and reaffirm their commitment to the ideals of our great nation.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY USA!
