Happy Independence Day

"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."

   Edmund Burke

Do we know our history?   I fear that I know so little compared to what I desire to know.   I love reading history books, especially true history from the actual words of those who lived it.  Unfortunately, we tend to be spoon fed our history from revisionist publishers and writers so that the truth has become so skewed.  Then again......

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."  (attributed to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda)

It's powerful, and it's humbling when we think back to what our Founding Fathers did over 200 years ago.   We owe our freedoms to men and women who risked EVERYTHING, including, and most especially, their lives.   This quote says it all:

Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of American Medicine and a signer, recorded that day in his diary. In 1781, he wrote to John Adams “Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the House when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress to subscribe to what was believed by many at that time to be our death warrants? The silence and gloom of the morning was interrupted, I well recollect, only for a moment by Colonel Harrison of Virginia (a big guy) who said to Mr. Gerry (small in stature) at the table: 'I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing... From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.' This speech procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the solemnity with which the whole business was conducted.”

How many of us today would willingly sign a document like that, knowing what the cost would be, not only to ourselves, but to our entire family. These men and their families sacrificed much for us. It would seem to me that the least we could do is know just a little of what they did and why. 
 

Let us take some time this Independence Day to know what really occurred and why.   Possibly this article would be a good source of information.   Read some books by TRUE historians, or better yet, grab some books by Peter Marshall that are compilations of the written words of those men and women who lived and risked so much.  

Let's celebrate this year with a deeper understanding of the roots of our country, of the families who first came here and why.  Let's research to know what was intended when the original documents were written (ie., The Declaration of Independence, The American Constitution, The Bill of Rights, etc.)

Or, we can just continue down the path that has given us this.....We have a choice.