Happy Fourth of July to all of my readers from the United States!
Today is the day we celebrate the birth of our nation, our independence from Great Britain. We call it a revolution. That's not what they call it in Great Britain. Looking back nearly 240 years, we tend to have a glorified image of a united people who rise up against a repressive evil empire.
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As we watch the uprisings across the Middle East, let's not be too quick to judge either those in power or those revolting. Those living in the colonies were not united in their dislike of the British and revolutionaries were certainly not all saints nor were their motives all pure. Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill is an excellent resource for learning more about this time in our history.
Still...
I'm glad the founding fathers and those who agreed with them pushed on despite the risk and the cost. For all of it's flaws, I still believe in the democratic system of government. I'm grateful that a group of people came together to create, as Abraham Lincoln noted almost one hundred years later, a "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
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