Happy Independence Day
The Fourth of July is called the Fourth, but of course it’s also called Independence Day.
Independence, as in “The Declaration of Independence,” meant that we had severed our ties with England and were autonomous, although it took many long years of struggle before we established our own government and its Constitution. But “independence” has a meaning that’s, well, independent of that, with synonyms such as “self”“sufficiency, self-dependence, self-reliance, self-subsistence, self-support” and antonyms such as “dependence.”
Of course, in some sense we are all dependent on each other; no man (or woman) is an island. But there is a growing feeling in this country that we have a right to ask, or even to demand, of other people that they take care of us, not of their own free will as voluntary charity, but as a matter of law and compulsion. And not only when we are in dire straights—struck by serious hardships outside of our control—but also if we don’t happen to have as much money as they do, or as much as we would want, or if we just don’t feel like working.
Sometimes it seems as though some are celebrating Independence Day while others are celebrating Dependence Day.
And I’m by no means talking about one ethnic group or another. I’m talking about a mindset that knows no boundaries of that sort, and which has grown and grown in recent decades to encompass vast portions of the populace. It’s a mindset that will destroy us.
So, Happy Independence Day, in addition to Happy Fourth!
[NOTE: Eat that BBQ or those burgers or those hot dogs. It’s very nasty and rainy here today, so my burgers will be cooked indoors.]
Also, and vastly important in ‘my world’, it’s the birthday of The Little BIG Boss, my wife and center of my universe. 4″11′ & 98-lbs and Sicilian. I’m an Anglo Saxon white boy in a mixed marriage. And Lucky/Blessed beyond expressing.
Happy Birthday, My Love!! Happy Birthday, America!!
Weaklings want to be dependent upon a Higher Power, to take care of them. That’s human instinct. But when it becomes not just an ethical matter but a political matter of forcing control over others, then there’s a problem.
Humans often are like crabs in a bucket. There’s no need to place a cover to stop the crabs from escaping, since if any crab is close to escaping, the other crabs pull it down. That’s humanity in a nutshell.
Neo, stay safe and dry – and may “Arthur” pass by you and yours.
Ah, to live in the a sweet land of rapidly fading liberty. Its a beautiful day here with a deep blue sky, bright cumulus, and the humidity is down. Our area had 3 to 5 inches of rain on Monday sent horizonal at times by gusts of 60 mph. Water ways are flooding and many trees and limbs were lost. No big deal. Things are back to more or less normal and our block party potluck is about to begin.
I wish all weathering Arthur a safe Independence Day.
The very term Independence Day harkens back to the era of indentured servitude.
Upon the full term of the contract/ indenture one became independent from one’s master.
I rather suspect that in 18th Century America, the Founding Fathers considered that the Colonies had more than fulfilled any indenture towards the mother country.
This was an era when colonial trading blocs existed — a collective indenture upon every American colonist.
Omitted from all high school history texts, the termination of the Seven Years War/ French and Indian War up-ended the Colonial economies.
1) Commodity prices fell — a LOT. The Colonies (especially down south) lived off of commodity exports.
2) Manufactures (imports) were repriced to reflect the consumption taxes that the Crown used to retire war bonds.
3) The redemption of the war bonds was confined to the mother country — as none had been sold to colonials overseas. As they were paid off, liquidity became widely available in London — whereas every colony was being reduced to trading in script and barter.
4) It’s the TOTAL LACK OF COIN that had the colonies in an uproar. By this round about mechanism, the Crown drove the Americas into a full-blow depression. It was worse than any that came thereafter. The only reason it does not get much press is because the Revolution — and its history — quashed the economic story.
The reason why the 18th Century depression was so severe is because no-one in the Colonies could get the Crown to back off on tax collections. Back in England it was good times all around.
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That epic folly is now being revisited by DC, which is stunningly disconnected to the distress caused by 0bamavision.
And we’re only seeing the leading edges of his follies.
Run away taxation triggers civil conflict — if not out right civil war.
%%%
I saw “America” today.
Dinesh D’Souza has crafted a most excellent presentation.
His exposition on indentured Whites and Black slavery needs to be pumped up and laid out:
The American jurisprudence for slavery started from indentured labor. In the earliest days there were no Black slaves at all — just indentured Blacks.
Then, building upon case law (no statutes led the way) the courts permitted the masters of Black indentures to keep extending their terms of indenture — ultimately for life.
When similar gambits were set against White indentures howls of protest went up. It was hardly uncommon for a “double signed” White to simply up and flee to another colony, changing his (or her) name along the way.
Since most indentured labor was illiterate (and often children, (ie 13 years old) to boot) the signature was just an X, referred to as your ‘cross.’
{The Biblical New Testament implications must be obvious…}
To double sign someone was then termed “double crossing” them.
‘Double crossing’ still carries the same meaning: remaking a deal after the fact to burn one party.
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The practice of indenture was crushed by the Revolution. This almost never gets any press.
The astounding parallels between that time and Barry’s child army are stark.
He’s importing proles for his ACORN army.
Hence his non-profit, for-power OFA:
Organizing for Absolutism.
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As to why the courts ever permitted masters to gain perpetual servitude out of indentured Blacks…
You just know that it was done out of compassion… for the Black laborer. (!)
Once the (case) law permitted it, various colonies codified such ‘arrangements’ into various statutes — usually by indirection. (Like prohibiting education in the three R’s for Blacks. Such cultural starvation made it plain that Blacks would HAVE to stay on the plantation — lest they starve to death.)
In the beginning the arguments (in court) ran along the line of who’re you going to believe and the pitch that the indentured couldn’t make his way in the world — so ‘obviously’ he’d not spent seven years in the colony… and many another lie.
Eventually all pretense was dropped and the fulsome import of Black slaves hit full stride. Interestingly, The slave trade — into the Colonies — went into a severe slump after the Revolution — eventually being prohibited, entirely. (circa 1806)
Until Dred Scott (and Buchanan) one was in hot water even trying to travel out of the South with your slave. The USSC Federalized slavery statues by way of Dred Scott — and reversed all prior state statutes prohibiting slave owners from taking their ‘property’ along for a trip. Thereafter the Whigs died and the Republican party was ascendant.
Importing illegal aliens is — in economic terms — a relapse into slavery — a slave economy.
No-one has any job for them if they don’t work for penurious wages.
This was last seen in 1986: with amnesty, the illegals lost their jobs across the board. (They became welfare cases or criminals, usually the former.) Then a batch of ‘fresh ones’ were imported to take their place.
This dynamic will happen until the end of time. If given an ‘out’ employers of stoop labor will ALWAYS bring in illegals.
It’s logic is straight from Schindler’s List: “…but Jews are cheaper than Poles…” Even rock bottom Polish wages couldn’t compete with forced labor.
$$$
And so it’s destruct, destroy… ruin.
Barry’s on a mission to break up a million families and import kids that have no economic prospect of ever making it as independent citizens.
Barry’s orphanage…
The scourge of a nation, he is.
Happy Independence Day from flyover country on the North Coast. Absolutely beautiful day, 78 and sunny. We deserve it, after a record setting 84 inches of snow last winter!
Happy Independence Day to all.
It is fitting that the nature of so many Independence Day celebrations is local and even neighborhood centric. Started the day at a local 5k/10k run-walk. Just one of a multitude around SoCAL. I watched–my son-in-law win the wheel chair 10k by default. Grandson finished 4th overall and 1st in the 17-19 age group; and his mother was 5th in the 50-54 age group. Fourteen hundred runners or walkers. These events are great
Of course the broadcast of the Capital 4th from the DC Mall is always a unifying event–for at least a short time; and it competes with fireworks displays, great and small, around the country.
Surely the Independence Day Concert is still held in Boston.
For those who missed it, Bill O’Reilly sent Jesse Watters out to ask Founding Father type questions of folks around New York, and college age kids on the beach. It is bitter sweet fun to watch. Funny, and sweet because it makes me feel superior, although the threshold is very low. Bitter because these are people who are eligible to vote.
For one day, people seem to be happy to be Americans, and most even remember what it means.
I took two pictures today; one happy one sad.
The tale of the first was just a moment I had.
The second hit my gut from power horned and mad.
Today, I took two pictures, I’m alive I think.
Although most of me is gone, I caress the link
I had with the moment when I was more than ink.
Thanks Oldflyer, there was a pathos to your post that really hit me hard.
For one day, people seem to be happy to be Americans, and most even remember what it means.
My beloved and cherished wife came from Hell in 1979. The Hellhole she left (USSR) would not provide her with the basic documents of life when she left.
Her mother, my beloved “Momma,” not a political person or given to sophisticated analysis (or any analysis for that matter), shared our meal today, just the three of us (as circumstances dictated).
Momma expressed her alarm at the change in America since she came. Momma has zero calculation in her. She said how amazing America was when she came here, in so many ways, getting beautiful food when she needed it, and saying what she wanted without fear of disappearing.
Momma said she was frightened by the way BO hated everyday Americans. Again, she has no interest in politics or ideological battles. She just wants to live peacefully. The Nazis literally buried her family alive and the communists kept her in a constant state of fear.
To this lovely and simple person, BO’s malicious motivations were no secret. She could not understand why Americans could not see as much. She does not have crippling filters.
The problem, as I see it, is how to deal with the national slow-motion but thoroughly complete coup which has taken place, when even non-Leftists of a highly informed and intelligent perspective will not allow themselves to see it. I am guessing they do not see it for fear of being accused of tin-hattery.
I do not like Pat Buchanan because of his antisemitism, although I recognize his subtle intelligence and writing. Today he wrote a column about the 150 year old history of the hatred of black people by the Democrat party, and revealed several facts about the affirmative collaboration with this hatred by the national Democrat party.
I will now say why I am disgusted and discouraged by the stupidity of the non-Left.
Black support of the Democratic party is absurd. Black Americans are like all Americans, variations on the bell curve.
The hatred underlying black support of the Democrat party is hatred cleverly fomented by the Left.
Why, why, would the non-Left ever, for a split second, not seek to remind everybody of the truth, the historic and politically aggressive hatred of black people by the Democrat party for 15 decades?
For many decades the Democrat party used the word nigger for political gain, explicitly. Now anyone else is prohibited from explicitly using the word as a factual matter?
The Democrat (Leftist) party always uses the issue of race.
The party specifically wants to use reparations as a club.
Here is a specific instance why non-Leftists are losers.
The Leftists concede that reparations are owed. The Democrat party is the ONLY entity still existing responsible for slavery.
It is so easy. Yet non-Leftists, ridiculously, ridicule the idea of demanding of Leftists what they have already agreed is due from them.
The sole question presented to us, is what to do given the complete Leftist domination of every significant sector of society.
But we are reluctant to even point out the true facts of the history of the Left.
Why, why, do we not demand reparations for black people by the Democrat party? I want the non-Leftists to tell me why.
That was beautiful.
I know a beautiful Czech couple who came to America in 1979, and it is so clear to them, and they agonize, agonize, over Obama and his henchmen. They came to America with nothing, nothing, and working as a maid and a mechanic, they now own a nice home. And they are so clear in their understanding in what is happening because they’ve seen it and recognize it. They have asked me, where could we go? I was stunned.
Blert, that was some very informative and excellent history. No coin, huh?
Yeah, kind of like we are now relying on the paper from the Fed.
I am ground zero tonight. Surely some of you are as well.
What am I referring to?
The amount of ordinance being let off in regular neighborhoods. These aren’t ordinary firecrackers and M-80’s. These are a magnitude different and the difference is illegal traffic from Mexico.
Fun? I guess? Well see if this makes the news, but an emboldened Mexican element now blows symbolic.
It’s only 10:00 in Orange County, California, and I know it will go on for another four hours. Mexicans are celebrating our 4th of July and Independence. Not hardly.
There are starbursts being set off from all over. Completely new and different from just last year. Mexico is trying to let us know, we are the history, they are the future. And every year they produce more babies than us, and we abort all of ours, they are right.
blert: My family went to see “America” on Thursday night. We also thought it was very good.
I have a Polish friend, 58, who was part of Solidarity in Poland; her father was murdered by the Communists. She stupidly voted for Comrade Zero, because she’s a European Intellectual[TM], but admits now that she made a terrible mistake, and SHE is alarmed at what is happening to America.
She also said all the Poles she knows — all of them — vote Republican.
Ditto the Vietnamese refugees. Ditto the Russian refugees.
I got the chance to meet some Republican politicians, and said, “Why don’t you people get some refugees from Communism to cut some commercials WARNING everyone what’s in store?” but they did not get me
(BTW, Neo: dire straits. The Dire Straights are another tribe. ;-))
Dire Straights are San Franciscan refugees…
Tonawanda… Magnificent. Beautifully stated.
The 100-million(+)corpses of last century’s Communism are a horrific monument to Evil unsurpassed by any others throughout history.
Thank you, Sir. And, your Momma!
People letting off too many firecrackers and gunpowder explosions.
Some really loud ones. Makes it hard to hear people sneaking up on me.
The problem, as I see it, is how to deal with the national slow-motion but thoroughly complete coup which has taken place, when even non-Leftists of a highly informed and intelligent perspective will not allow themselves to see it.
Ignorance is no excuse for aiding evil. People are part of the Left, whether they know it or not, whether they want it or not, precisely because of that little issue.
Highlights from the Independence Day parade in Chelmsford, Mass. yesterday:
Before the parade, the national anthem is sung; people stand at attention and remove their hats
Everyone claps wildly for all the military, especially for the Vietnam Vets, who marched, and for the WWII vets, who rode, and for the “iPod for wounded vets” group (which had a float and a booth for us to go provide contributions)
Most of us were wearing red, white, and blue, and many of us were waving flags
Very clever homemade float used a cardboard frame and a whole lot of blue cellophane to create what looked like a big fish tank on the back of a flatbed truck
Crowd-pleasing frisbee-catching dog and his frisbee-throwing friend; anyone can be in the parade, just sign up
Historical Minuteman groups from different towns in their traditional garb such as three cornered hats, marching with their muskets and fife-and-drum corps; it’s very loud and dramatic when they fire their muskets
A welcome sign of unity: Republican Town Committee flanked its banner with two huge flags, one Old Glory and one big yellow Gadsden