Happy Fourth of July

[DoubleRBar]

I want to wish everyone (no matter which country you represent) a happy fourth of July. This date may mean different things to different people. I know a few people that were born on the fourth of July. Some may have been married on the fourth of July.

Of course for most Americans it means fireworks, no work, and being patriotic. For most of the rest of the world, it just means another day in July.

I believe I am very lucky to live in a great country, even though we don't always have the best leaders. Sometimes our country is great in spite of the leaders.

I have been lucky to have been able to travel around the world and see other great countries on this planet. Maybe one day all countries will attend the Olympic Games with no fighting anywhere on Earth. Probably not in my lifetime.

The fourth of July represents the ratification of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Of course the U.S. could not become a country without a war....the War of Independence. Today the United States turns 243 years old. Happy birthday to the United States and may we all continue to be great and to do the right thing.

[Tuariki]

I believe I am very lucky to live in a great country, even though we don't always have the best leaders. Sometimes our country is great in spite of the leaders.
.........
Happy birthday to the United States and may we all continue to be great and to do the right thing.

Hopefully the American voter will do the right thing and put in a new tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania.

[Atticus]

I want to wish everyone (no matter which country you represent) a happy fourth of July.
Sometimes our country is great in spite of the leaders.

Amen and amen.

[booond]

Happy 4th to all.

[bobguild76]

Happy 4th to all.

Yes, Happy 4th of July to all.

[Pego]

Happy Fourth to the Merkans and Happy Thursday to everybody else.

[user4]

The fourth of July represents the ratification of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Of course the U.S. could not become a country without a war....the War of Independence. Today the United States turns 243 years old. Happy birthday to the United States and may we all continue to be great and to do the right thing.

Happy Independence Day DoubleBar. Just hearing you say that makes me more proud to be an adopted son of the original sons of liberty!!

[bobguild76]

The great Ray Charles ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRUj...L8BqCRAqWkToFw

[18.99s]

I want to wish everyone (no matter which country you represent) a happy fourth of July. This date may mean different things to different people.

It definitely does mean different things to different people.

Thinking of it as a black man looking at history, the 4th of July 1776 wasn't such a great moment in time. Slavery was still legal. Britain abolished slavery in its colonies in 1834, but America's independence allowed legal slavery to continue until the Civil War ended it in 1865.

That's an extra 30-something years of slavery that people suffered through due to America's independence. A whole generation could have been spared the horrors of slavery had it ended in America in 1834 when the British abolished it.

On the other hand, one could make the argument that the Americans would have defied Britain's abolition order, including fighting a war of independence if Britain tried to physically force the issue. And if Britain lost that war, the war could have united America in preserving slavery past 1900, instead of having an America divided over the issue to the point of reaching Civil War in 1861.

Of course, no one can really know what would have happened in the alternate timeline without American independence in 1776, but those are just some thoughts on why I don't view July 4th with unmitigated joy and pride like most Americans do.

[Atticus]

Thinking of it as a black man looking at history, the 4th of July 1776 wasn't such a great moment in time.

Frederick Douglass's famous take on the 4th of July:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

I imagine this resonated in Colin Kaepernick's decision.