Happy birthday to US!

I intended to publish this on Independence Day, but it turned out that I was on vacation and not very near a computer. No biggie. Even by my standards 229 years is a long time so an extra 10 days don't matter all that much, dih?

Reality Check

“We hold these truths...self-evident...:”
--but difficult to engender,
burdensome in delivery,
fated to be baptized by blood.
So when we take the sacred oath,
“...all men are created equal..,”
we swear we know it to be true
and can but pray to Nature’s God
that we will stand and make it real.

The quoted passages above are, of course, from the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) which contains some extremely idealistic language. (If you're not familiar with this document, just Google "Declaration of Independence" and it will be made available to you.)

In the 229 intervening years we here in the good old USofA have managed to make a pretty good hash out of the old DOI; perhaps human nature is just too powerful to be overcome by sentiment and high-falutin' language; but, if we keep what I consider to be our founding document before us as a template, we can always have a goal that can, perhaps, help lift us up and away from our demons.

We will do well to heed Lord Acton's admonition: "Nearly all great men are bad men. Power is poison....The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern; every class is unfit to govern." (emphasis added) Add "political party" to "class" and we have it pretty well nailed.

As my daddy used to say, "It's all right to trust folks, but always cut the cards."

I hope you had a really good Fourth; I did.

Papa Goat