Independence Day Thoughts...

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

I have a mild obsession for the American Declaration of Independence, It is a magnificently written document that expresses in glorious Jeffersonian prose, the hopes, and dreams of the people living in those thirteen British colonies in 1776.

As a result, the Fourth of July, has always been one my favourite holidays. I love all the Americana that goes with it. When I lived in Chicago, I would practically force my friends to come with me and picnic in Grant Park where we would sit on the grass eating watermelon, waving sparklers and listening to the Chicago Symphony play “Stars and Stripes Forever” as the fireworks boomed over our heads.

It was always at that moment, seeing the thousands of people around me cheering and waving flags, I’d feel so fortunate to have been born an American. A nation that, despite all its flaws and foibles , has nevertheless, never stopped striving to be that place Katherine Lee Bates called “American the Beautiful”.

The experience of celebrating American independence from outside the United States is not a new one for me. Today is the fifteenth July 4th holiday in my life, spent as an “ex pat”.   I have observed this day in Germany, in South Korea and here in the UK. Friends and co-workers here, were surprised to learn I was not going to take the day off today. I had thought about it, but when you get right down to it, Tuesday, July 4th, is just another workday here. So when in Rome... or in this case, London...

Having served its original purpose in announcing independence, the text of the Declaration was initially ignored after the American Revolution. Its stature grew over the years, particularly the second sentence, which came to be seen as a sweeping statement in support of human rights:

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."

I have always loved those words, because at their core, they proclaim why American was designed to be different. What would set us apart from the other nations of the world. No feudal systems of hereditary privilege for us, thank you very much. You keep your Kings, and Dukes and Earls and Viscounts and whatnot.

For us, America would be a place where power and governance would rest in the hands of the many, not the one.

Now on this 4th of July I find myself feeling another emotion... Embarrassment. Now don't misunderstand, I am not embarrassed to be an American, quite the opposite in fact. I have been and always will feel I am blessed to have born a citizen of my country. No I am embarrassed by my country's Government, my country's electorate, and by its choices.

I am horrified, appalled and disgusted by my country's President.

On this day, of all days. It is worth revisiting that brilliant founding document. Jefferson's masterful expression of the American Mind. The American Declaration of Independence


Never in my lifetime would I hear those words and think that a passage written in defiance of a mentally unstable king, would apply so aptly to the President of the United States.

A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

The legacy of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and all the other Men and Women who on this day in 1776, set sail in "a skiff, made of paper"; is now in the hands of a mentally unstable, narcissistic man-baby, whose infantile reaction to one of America's core freedoms, the freedom of the press,  was to take to the internet and post.... this:

This... whatever  you want to call it, is what passes for an official statement from the President of the United States in 2017.   To all Americans  wherever you are in the world, if  you are not embarrassed by that, then you are as ignorant of  what this day means as the rodeo clown  in that video is.   

It is my fervent hope that  my nation will soon come to its senses and  reclaim our legacy as an example to the rest of the world.  Instead of what Donald Trump is making it...  An embarrassment.

Happy Independence Day everyone.