THE LAST CELEBRATION?

As I celebrated Independence Day 2011 an incredibly depressing thought occurred to me; could this be the last time we celebrate the Fourth of July? In 1776 a Declaration of Independence was adopted by our founding fathers that separated us from the tyrannical rule of the British monarchy. Eleven years later the United States Constitution was drawn up and we embarked on an experiment with a form of government that had never been tried before anywhere in the world. The Constitution stated clearly and emphatically that this was to be a limited government that can only exercise the powers given to it by the people, and that there were certain rights that could not be interfered with  that belong to these same people and to the states they live in.

 Now, 235 years later we have a President of the United States and other elected officials who routinely rewrite the Declaration of Independence by leaving out the phrase “endowed by our Creator” when referring to these rights. Instead, they talk about these rights as being granted to us by the government, thereby insinuating that they can be taken away at will by the same government. In addition, we have members of the three branches of government, the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch who are choosing to ignore the Constitution entirely in order to impose their will on the free people of the United States.

 In just the last few weeks we have had federal officials tell veteran groups at a national cemetery in Houston, Texas that they can no longer exercise freedom of speech or freedom of religion by using the terms God, Jesus, or God Bless at funerals of the men and women who fought and died for our country. Families of active-duty military and veterans who are to be buried in this holy ground must have their prayers get prior approval by some faceless bureaucrats. These same bureaucrats will attend the funerals not to console the grieving families but to make sure that they act in a politically correct manner when grieving.

 At the same time NBC has censored the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag and our country by removing the words “under God” from it when it was recited by schoolchildren during the opening of one of its broadcast of a sporting event. In the meantime, another major news outlet, Time magazine, has declared our Constitution irrelevant and a broadcaster for CNN news has suggested that it be thrown out entirely.

 Then we have the two professors at Harvard University who while sitting high above the rest of us in their ivory tower at this bastion of left-wing thought, claimed to have done a scientific study that proves that Independence Day is only celebrated by Republicans and other right wingers. They further claim that it is simply a tool to indoctrinate children into becoming Republicans. That idiotic discourse was followed by members of the Obama administration stating that if Congress fails to do what Obama wants and raise the debt ceiling and taxes, he will simply ignore the Constitution and the Congress and continue to spend money that we do not have. This will ultimately throw this country into an economic crisis we cannot recover from.

 The question is if we allow our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our patriotic and religious traditions to be relegated to the trash bins of so-called progressive thought, what will we have left to celebrate on future Independence Days? The answer of course is nothing. We will no longer be free people.

Yet, millions of Americans continue to be oblivious to this fact. They seem not to know, or perhaps not even care, that our precious freedoms are being taken away from us at an accelerated pace. I can clearly remember the day in 2003 when I said goodbye to my oldest son as he left for the first of four overseas deployments in a combat zone. As proud as I was of him,     I could not help but be troubled by a statement I had heard; “that while our military was going to war the rest of America was going to the mall.” Now, eight years later my youngest son is preparing to go overseas and many Americans are still at the mall.

As the men and women in our armed forces are dying on foreign battlefields to protect our freedoms we have a President of the United States who is using their lives as pawns in his reelection campaign. He and his cronies are also stripping away those very freedoms that are being so ably defended by America's bravest and finest who wear our country’s uniform.

 We owe it not just to ourselves, but also to them to get into the fight here at home. It is time for Americans to leave the mall and start standing up to those who seek to destroy our Constitution, our way of life, and the American dream. We need to show the elitists in the government, in the news media, and on our college campuses that the Constitution of the United States is not irrelevant and neither are we. Only that way can we be assured of celebrating future Independence days.

Michael Connelly