This is my MOST favorite holiday of the year. MOST. I'm a yankee doodle dandy :)
SPECTACULAR SPECTACLE Fireworks light up the sky over New York’s East River, looking from Queens toward Manhattan, during a Fourth of July celebration. The Chrysler Building is at right. This Friday’s celebration will feature digital synchronization that will allow fireworks to move in close harmony with a live sound track. Thats where I'll be. Woo hoo!
Send the word, over there.
Does patriotism matter? Dr. Thomas Sowell
The Fourth of July is a patriotic holiday but patriotism has long been viewed
with suspicion or disdain by many of the intelligentsia. As far back as 1793,
prominent British writer William Godwin called patriotism "high-sounding
nonsense."
Internationalism has long been a competitor with patriotism, especially among
the intelligentsia. H.G. Wells advocated replacing the idea of duty to one's
country with "the idea of cosmopolitan duty."
Perhaps nowhere was patriotism so downplayed or deplored than among
intellectuals in the Western democracies in the two decades after the horrors of
the First World War, fought under various nations' banners of patriotism.
Read all of Sowell
UPDATE: From Atlas reader Norman: "I'm sure you've heard or read this piece. It was written 35 years ago by Gordon
Sinclair, a Canadian journalist. It sums up what I and many of my fellow
citizens think of The Americans.'
"On June 5,
1973,
following news that the American Red Cross had run out of money as a result of
aid efforts for recent natural disasters, Sinclair recorded what would become
his most famous radio editorial, "The Americans." While paying tribute to American success,
ingenuity, and generosity to people in need abroad, Sinclair decried that when
America faced crisis itself, it often seemed to face that crisis alone."
UPDATE: Bill sent the audio of Sincalir. Fabulous! Download GS-06051973.mp3
UPDATE: Thank the troops!
UPDATE: Paine the Pamphleteer
UPDATE: Van did the Atlasphere a great service. He chose to send us some quotes from our founding fathers that relate most curiously to current times. Van said, "It shows the prescience of these
great Men and this great Experiment called AMERICA."
QUOTES FROM THE FOUNDING FATHERS
Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.
George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the
dark corners of the earth; that freedom of enquiry will produce
liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position
that the many were, made for the few; and that they will not continue
slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in
another.
George Washington, draft of First Inaugural Address, April 1789
If we desire to insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to
secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising
prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.
George Washington, Annual Message, December 1793
I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with
veneration and love.
George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789
It is yet to be decided whether the Revolution must ultimately be
considered as a blessing or a curse: a blessing or a curse, not to the
present age alone, for with our fate will the destiny of unborn
millions be involved.
George Washington, Circular to the States, 1783
It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a
great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example
of a People always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.
George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
George Washington, letter to James Madison, March 2, 1788
May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon
our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here, and
in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.
George Washington, letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode
Island, August 17, 1790
***********
I have been happy... in believing that... whatever follies we may be
led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the
last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this
heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, May 13, 1797
I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political
principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to
give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility
from those of adverse principles.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard M. Johnson, March 10, 1808
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too
many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow, September 6, 1824
If a nation expects to be ignorant — and free — in a state of
civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816
*************
A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of
acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps
both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean
to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which
knowledge gives.
James Madison, letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822
Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they
pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution
which has no parallel in the annals of human society.
James Madison, Federalist No. 14, November 20, 1787
A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events,
which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary
philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.
James Madison, essay in the National Gazette, February 2, 1792
All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, July 11, 1787
America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier,
exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America
disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.
James Madison, Federalist No. 14, November 30, 1787
Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.
James Madison, Federalist No. 10, November 23, 1787
Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man
who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may
cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be
able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.
James Madison, Federalist No. 41, January 1788