I love my country, the United States of America. It is the best country in the world, and I refuse to apologize for that statement.
I say it even more emphatically after having travelled this past winter. I enjoyed our adventures, but I almost kissed the ground when we landed back at O'Hare.
We have been blessed in our country. We are privileged with technology and wealth and knowledge. We are privileged to be able to vote and speak and write. To let our voice be heard.
Not many things make me tear up but my gratefulness to be a citizen of this country does. To see the flag flying proud in the breezes. To hear our national anthem sung-at ball games and funerals and races. To visit memorials of those who have given their lives to ensure my freedoms. To visit our monuments and icons. This makes me proud to be an American. This stirs my blood.
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands 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.
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.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world..."
Tomorrow, as we celebrate our country's 237th birthday and consider our amazing country, may your heart overflow with gratefulness and pride and your eyes with happy tears.
Happy 4th of July, and I'll see you on Friday!
