npr is about as patriotic as google...* I give a pass to the Jehovah Witnesses crowd. Their objection is a matter of faith.
As long as they don’t smoke a cigarette while they’re celebrating or not celebrating, its all freedom.
He was also a rabid anti-smoker.
/johnny
I can’t wait until this clown is under Sharia Law.
If everyone is shivering with cold, and you only have a small fire, surely the appropriate action is not to put that small fire out!
Oh good grief
You can not celebrate 4th of July if you want. You don’t need permission to not celebrate it. That’s the whole point of freedom, you have freedom to not do something as well as do something.
But why make a federal case out of it?
npr is about as patriotic as google...Sounds like “All Things Considered,” trivial, irrelevant, and usually collectivist.
Economic Bondage?
Is he referring to the millions of us who work hard for every dollar only to have the federal government extort much of it from us with threats of fines and imprisonment so they can then turn around and pass our hard earned money over to loafers, moochers, terrorists, communists, illegal aliens, pals of the president and other outright America haters?
Now that’s econ0omic bondage !!!
Frederick Douglass was right. His 1852 oration is one of the most important and powerful speeches in American history.
But he got over it when the the institution of slavery was destroyed, thanks in large part to his agitation.
*Excerpt*
“Feeling themselves harshly and unjustly treated by the home government, your fathers, like men of honesty, and men of spirit, earnestly sought redress. They petitioned and remonstrated; they did so in a decorous, respectful, and loyal manner. Their conduct was wholly unexceptionable. This, however, did not answer the purpose. They saw themselves treated with sovereign indifference, coldness and scorn. Yet they persevered. They were not the men to look back.
As the sheet anchor takes a firmer hold, when the ship is tossed by the storm, so did the cause of your fathers grow stronger, as it breasted the chilling blasts of kingly displeasure. The greatest and best of British statesmen admitted its justice, and the loftiest eloquence of the British Senate came to its support. But, with that blindness which seems to be the unvarying characteristic of tyrants, since Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, the British Government persisted in the exactions complained of.
The madness of this course, we believe, is admitted now, even by England; but we fear the lesson is wholly lost on our present ruler.
Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.
Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor.
These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.
Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it.
On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshipers of property, clothed that dreadful idea with all the authority of national sanction. They did so in the form of a resolution; and as we seldom hit upon resolutions, drawn up in our day whose transparency is at all equal to this, it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. “Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.”
Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history — the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day — cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight.”
— Frederick Douglass, ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July’ speech, July 5, 1852
Read the entire speech here:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/
Yo, Linton Weeks, bite me.
Are airplanes and ships still plying the airspace and waters between the United States and the continent of Africa? If so, why don’t they leave?
Mourning is most appropriate, it seems to me.
Anyone still doubt it ?
Idiots like this ‘wet on the graves of the dead heroes defending this country’.
If this (cluck) wants to not celebrate the birthday of this nation, he can do so in the privacy of his own home, and leave those of us who DO wish to celebrate the day, (even if that is in ashes and sackcloth - due to the queer-in-charge), to do so openly and with the sloemnity that John Adams advocated!
How does an NPR blog wind up in Breaking News?
Stupid f-ing articles this this one makes me look forward to the Second Civil War (i.e., the War to Liberate America from Modern Liberalism).
Hey Mr Lamar, pick a better country.
As Cassius Clay once famously said, sort of...
Our grandfathers may have come over in different boats, but we are all in the same boat now.
When the Potato Famine hit Ireland, the Irish left.
When Hitler came to power in Germany, the Jews left.
When hard economic times hit Italy and Poland, the Italians and the Poles left.
When religious freedom was denied in Britain, the British left.
If the country you live in is the worst place on earth, it wouldn’t be too difficult to find a better place to live.
I recently expressed my suspicion the Left is attacking the 4th of July.