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To the members of our military and their families: Thank you for your service and sacrifice.

Prayers to the brave men and women of the USA!

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

Douglas MacArthur

More than ever before we should be celebrating Independence Day for it’s origin and what it stands for, what the actions of a few daring men meant for the future of the United States of America. Instead.. it’s become another commercial holiday.

I am a strong supporter of the members of our military. These men and woman give up holidays, sleep, convenience, and time.. precious moments with their families that can never be replaced.
They deserve, at Least, our respect.

We also need this. We need to celebrate the things that matter. Together.
So.. where ever you’re from. What ever you’re beliefs. Have a wonderful Fourth of July.

Things that Make America Great:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

-Preamble to the Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence is the base for which our great country is founded on. Though it is not legally binding, this document is one of the most powerfully inspirational pieces of our country’s history. Abraham Lincoln once called it “a rebuke and a stumbling-block to tyranny and oppression”.

The Declaration remains one of the most widely recognized accomplishments of our great nation and continues to stand for freedom and equality to this day.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
               

-Preamble to the United States Constitution

The Constitution

Our Constitution brought together the many states, all joined with the common goal and hope for unity under the country’s first national government. And despite their many differences this was, perhaps, our greatest step towards achieving the freedoms we enjoy to this day.

“America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

President Harry. S Truman

The Star-Spangled Banner

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

The first verse in our national anthem, be honest, do you know it? I recall singing this quite a lot growing up(ad nauseam.) Sports games, assembly at school, holidays.. we were taught to stand tall, hand to our chest, and bow our heads in honor of those fighting and the fallen. Where is that today? Do children still stand in silence for God and country, or are these traditions.. our history, slowly being forgotten?

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Pledge of Allegiance

I once found myself in a room with five of my peers, all of us mid-twenties or so (three of whom were military) and we somehow came to the discussion of how we grew up with the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, but when attempting to say the pledge, only one was able to recall all the words. Just one person, out of the six of us, knew the words in it’s entirety.

I was shocked. How many of us no longer know our own Pledge of Allegiance or 2National Anthem?

“I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.“

-George Washington

We are a country of many. Many colors, religions, interests, and places. We are a beautifully diverse culmination of all that this world has to offer and we are blessed for it.

America, like freedom, means something different to every one of us..
What does it mean to you?

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