“The HYMNAL of AMERICA” - FJL

“July the Fourth” means many different things to many different people.

To some, it’s a celebration, and an opportunity to enjoy summer weather and backyard barbecues and fireworks with friends and neighbors.

I like that part - I admit it.

Today, when you’re enjoying your sweet corn and watermelon, waiting for it to grow dark enough for the fireworks, take the time to listen to the older folks among you, as they recall with pride your family’s part in our American story.

Your elders carry with them a wealth of knowledge and experience that should, that MUST be shared with succeeding generations, so that the values that made us are sustained.

Now comes the distant rumble of thunder…a storm approaches.

Today, as every year for over 225 years, we gather to celebrate our Independence…but are we still truly free?

There is a far deeper meaning to this holiday.

Many politicians will stand before you and make grandiose speeches, today – before crowds of citizens just waiting for the platitudes to end, and the fireworks to begin. 

They will invoke Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Lincoln, Washington, and others.  They will remind you that “government is here to help”.

Many of those speeches will ring hollow – as those standing before you have sold out – surrendering YOUR freedom to profiteers, to corruption.  A few true patriots still exist among our elected leadership – a very few.  The rest are more concerned with maintaining a corrupt status quo for their masters.

They have forgotten that, in this great American Experiment, YOU are the government.

It would do our “leadership” in Washington well to heed what inspired the Declaration of Independence, and what fomented the American Revolution – the actions of a “King” and a “Parliament” treating the colonies as nothing more than livestock - a revenue source to perpetuate their own wealth.

A Nation is born when a people agree to be heard as one voice, and are willing to stand together to defend one another. 

A Nation IS its people. We, the People, are not for sale. 

It would do our citizens well to understand the true aftermath of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, for those who stood up and put pen to paper, declaring that they would no longer accept the yoke of a tyrannical government.

They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

For many, the practical reality of our Revolutionary struggle was the loss of those first two in exchange for the third.

Few came through unscathed – and some were utterly broken in the struggle.

At the end of the hostilities, a new Nation had been forged.  We had been tested by fire, beaten on an anvil of oppression, and survived with that one value wholly intact.

HONOR.

The price of that freedom has been paid and repaid for generations – on our own shores, and in distant lands. 

The cost is not measurable in single lives – but in the collective loss of the flower of our youth, on the altar of HONOR.

We must remember what we’ve lost, if we are to hold on to what we’ve won.

As I watch those freedoms so sorely won being eroded by those with little understanding or respect for what motivated our ancestors to stand for what’s right, rather than to settle for what’s left, I am compelled to rise…to educate…to agitate…to bring remedy. 

Many bemoan the fact that the period of "American Exceptionalism" is at an end.  Others revel in it.  Our detractors smile smugly at the realization of their dream…that we, ourselves, have been, as Lincoln put it, once, (quoting from "HEBREWS"), “the author and finisher of our fate”. 

There are many with us who would see "American Exceptionalism" restored…who are unwilling to surrender the greatness of purpose that once drove this Nation.

We have been coddled and cajoled into a planned senescence, orchestrated by forces outside our governing bodies.  The floor of the House and Senate are where “We, the People”, deliver the

dream that is America to the rest of the world.  Our actions in our Legislature determine who WE ARE…defining us to ourselves, and to others. 

The control of that august body has been allowed to pass firmly into the hands of special interests, lobbyists, and corporations, some of which control assets greater than those of many of our smaller neighboring Nations. 

We have been fed an illusion that there are only two voices, and two choices – “Democrat” or “Republican”, “Liberal” or “Conservative”, “Pro-Life” or “Pro-Choice”, “Union” or “Non-Union”.  These divisions are false - a distraction, and an abstraction.  We are "Americans", and that should be our primary identity – an identity borne with pride.

The “Tree of Liberty” has three branches – Legislative, Executive, and Judicial.  We, the People, are the root-stock.

The Legislative Branch has been wickedly pruned by the actions of the other two.  That was never meant to be, and we must not allow it to continue. 

Only WE may hold the pruning shears.  They are applied at the ballot box.

America has been carefully divided – with the strongest independent voices carefully culled from public exposure. We have been divided so that we may be more easily subjugated – and we’ve allowed that division, through ignorance of the processes at work, to undermine all that our forefathers fought and died for.

We cannot move forward with one voice, with one purpose, as a Nation divided. 

Some would say that we never were “one voice” – and that maybe true, today – but it need not be true, forever.

I believe a good analogy is a church choir.

Today, we have been divided into “Red” and “Blue” choir robes, and handed different hymnals.  Is it no surprise that the noise rising from the floor of the House and Senate has become a disjointed and meaningless cacophony? 

This is not “music” – and certainly no symphony.

The “Hymnal” of America is its Constitution.  We must find our voice, once more.

The usurpers who have orchestrated this division profit from it.  These parasites must perpetuate the division we’re enduring to maintain their fortunes…fortunes cultivated with the blood, the sweat, and the tears of a people unwittingly enslaved.

If we choose to allow this to continue, we will have surrendered, squandered, even, the greatest gift our parents could ever have given us…whether born here, or brought here – to be Americans.

Sometimes, however, in order to bear more fruit, the vines must be dressed, the orchard, pruned. 

It is only by removing the “dead wood”, otherwise committed to themselves and their puppet-masters – we can grow, once more.

If your leadership needs pruning, know these two things:

1)     The power to cut away the unproductive branches lies in your vote. 

and

2)     It can take several seasons for your efforts to bear fruit once more.

As an old friend put it – “Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it burned in a fortnight.”

It is your obligation to take up the pruning hooks, beaten to such from the swords of your forefathers.

For pruning to be successful, it must be almost surgical in its application.  It is not a mere hacking away of all old growth.

The greatest gift YOU can give your children in preserving their legacy of freedom is your educated vote.

“Stand for what’s right, or settle for what’s left” –Frederick John LaVergne.