Hope everyone had a great 4th. I've spent the majority of my driving hours the past two months listening to Revolutionary War audio books, and I've learned a ton about what went on during the close of the Eighteenth Century.
We should keep in mind just how special this country is because many, many things could have gone the other way, and we could easily still be a colony of another nation. I really don't think people realize that fact anymore-- the revolution should have failed considering everything that was against those people. A (relatively) small group of men (and the women in their lives sacrificed in their own ways as well) went up against the greatest and most powerful nation that had ever existed up until that time and broke themselves away. For the first time in history, a colony successfully won its independence from its mother country without having a monarch take charge.
Even after the war was won, Europe figured we'd be back as a colony soon enough. It never happened, but it very easily could have. Some luck, some help (notably from France and The Netherlands), and the skill of a handful of men-- none of whom were "politicians" when they started-- who believed in what they had won and gave their entire beings to keeping it are all that kept this experiment from being a failure.
No matter what you think of our government now (I'm certainly not impressed), it's the country as well as the ideals that we need to remember are what makes us special.
I think we forget that, especially as we lose more and more people who were alive during the Forties (the last generation who really had to remember what we're about). Let's not forget anymore, and let's not let a major calamity be the reason we have to remember again.
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