4th of July reflections

     As I walked to the grocery store yesterday (July 3), I saw two American Flags on all the telephone polls on the east side of the street.  I felt pride in my community for decorating the telephone polls, pride in the United States and pride in the American Flag.   I neither have a "my country right or wrong" nor a "my country never does wrong" sentiment.  Our history is filled with all the wrongs we have done and mistakes we have made both here and around the world.  Still, I believe there is much for which we can be proud.

     When the colonists declared their independence July 4, 1776, they were willing to risk their lives to pursue the ideal that all are created equal, entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  In 1787, a group of men met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and wrote a Constitution that created a new form of government: a democratic republic with three distinct branches of government with a system of checks and balances.

     President Abraham Lincoln chose to accept war rather than let the Southern States leave the Union because he believed that if those States left, if the United States could not sustain itself, then neither could the concept of "government of the people, by the people and for the people."  There are those, I know, who argue that we no longer have that and perhaps never really had that.  That we have always had government by the rich and for the rich.  That allegation goes all the way back to the debates during and after the writing and ratification of the Constitution.

     Our history is filled with examples of people who were not given the equality about which Thomas Jefferson wrote and for which Abraham Lincoln and so many others gave their lives.  So what possible reason could I have to be proud?

     In every case, despite the best efforts of narrow-minded citizens and politicians, people found ways to make progress, to move our country forward, inching ever closer to that ideal of equality for all.  Do we still have far to go?  Absolutely!  Are there still those who would rather destroy this country than allow progress?  Yes! But what has and will always make me proud of the United States is the people who refuse to let this country turn back to a mythical non-existent past.  The people who know that we must continue moving forward and making progress 238 years after we took that first step.