I work at America First..and you know what they say if your not first then your last.. at least i think they say that.. if they dont then just I say it..which makes it ten times cooler! anyway, I thought this was cool. after being in Mexico for two years i realized just how much i loved and missed the good old U.S. of A. i love mexico it is my second home but lets face it.. America rocks! so happy 4th everyone and happy birthday mom! God Bless America!
PRESIDENT REAGAN:
"WHAT THE FOURTH MEANS TO ME"
"Man is born with certain God-given rights; government is
only a convenience"
by President Ronald Reagan
(Editor's note: When he was president, Ronald Reagan wrote
the following piece for Independence Day in 1981. Aide
Michael Deaver later wrote: "This 4th of July message is the
President's own words and written initially in his own
hand." For one who was born and grew up in the small towns
of the Midwest, there is a special kind of nostalgia about
the Fourth of July.)
I remember it as a day almost as long-anticipated as
Christmas. This was helped along by the appearance in store
windows of all kinds of fireworks and colorful posters
advertising them with vivid pictures.
No later than the third of July – sometimes earlier –
Dad would bring home what he felt he could afford to see go> up in smoke and flame.
We'd count and recount the number of
firecrackers, display pieces and other things and go to bed
determined to be up with the sun so as to offer the first,
thunderous notice of the Fourth of July.
I'm afraid we didn't give too much thought to the meaning
of the day. And, yes, there were tragic accidents to mar it,
resulting from careless handling of the fireworks. I'm sure
we're better off today with fireworks largely handled by
professionals. Yet there was a thrill never to be forgotten
in seeing a tin can blown 30 feet in the air by a giant
"cracker" – giant meaning it was about 4 inches long.
But enough of nostalgia. Somewhere in our growing up we
began to be aware of the meaning of days and with that
awareness came the birth of patriotism. July Fourth is the
birthday of our nation. I believed as a boy, and believe
even more today, that it is the birthday of the greatest
nation on earth.
There is a legend about the day of our nation's birth in
the little hall in Philadelphia, a day on which debate had
raged for hours. The men gathered there were honorable men
hard-pressed by a king who had flouted the very laws they
were willing to obey. Even so, to sign the Declaration of
Independence was such an irretrievable act that the walls
resounded with the words "treason, the gallows, the
headsman's axe," and the issue remained in doubt.
The legend says that at that point a man rose and spoke. He
is described as not a young man, but one who had to summon
all his energy for an impassioned plea. He cited the
grievances that had brought them to this moment and finally,
his voice falling, he said, "They may turn every tree into a
gallows, every hole into a grave, and yet the words of that
parchment can never die. To the mechanic in the workshop,
they will speak hope; to the slave in the mines, freedom.
Sign that parchment. Sign if the next moment the noose is
around your neck, for that parchment will be the textbook of
freedom, the Bible of the rights of man forever."
He fell back exhausted. The 56 delegates, swept up by his
eloquence, rushed forward and signed that document destined
to be as immortal as a work of man can be. When they turned
to thank him for his timely oratory, he was not to be found,
nor could any be found who knew who he was or how he had
come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.
Well, that is the legend. But we do know for certain that
56 men, a little band so unique we have never seen their
like since, had pledged their lives, their fortunes and
their sacred honor. Some gave their lives in the war that
followed, most gave their fortunes, and all preserved their
sacred honor.
What manner of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and
jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, and nine were
farmers. They were soft-spoken men of means and education;
they were not an unwashed rabble. They had achieved security
but valued freedom more. Their stories have not been told
nearly enough.
John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill
wife. For more than a year he lived in the forest and in
caves before he returned to find his wife dead, his children
vanished, his property destroyed. He died of exhaustion and
a broken heart.
Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships, sold his
home to pay his debts, and died in rags. And so it was with
Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris,
Livingston and Middleton.
Nelson personally urged Washington to fire on his home and
destroy it when it became the headquarters for General
Cornwallis. Nelson died bankrupt.
But they sired a nation that grew from sea to shining sea.
Five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep,
3 million square miles of forest, field, mountain and
desert, 227 million people with a pedigree that includes the
bloodlines of all the world.
In recent years, however, I've come to think of that day as
more than just the birthday of a nation.
It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution
in all history.
Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But
those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for
another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept
of government.
Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in
this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is
born with certain God-given rights; that government is only
a convenience created and managed by the people, with no
powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by
the people.
We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.
Happy Fourth of July.
