Most forum threads go off topic and ALL of them are very opinionated. But, your house, your rules. I’m just a guest. Thank you for responding.
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https://www.constitutionfacts.com/us-declaration-of-independence/fourth-of-july/ The Declaration of Independence We celebrate American Independence Day on the Fourth of July every year. We think of July 4, 1776, as a day that represents the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States of America as an independent nation. But July 4, 1776 wasn't the day that the Continental Congress decided to declare independence (they did that on July 2, 1776). It wasn’t the day we started the American Revolution either (that had happened back in April 1775). And it wasn't the day Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (that was in June 1776). Or the date on which the Declaration was delivered to Great Britain (that didn't happen until November 1776). Or the date it was signed (that was August 2, 1776). So what did happen on July 4, 1776? The Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. They'd been working on it for a couple of days after the draft was submitted on July 2nd and finally agreed on all of the edits and changes. July 4, 1776, became the date that was included on the Declaration of Independence, and the fancy handwritten copy that was signed in August (the copy now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.) It’s also the date that was printed on the Dunlap Broadsides, the original printed copies of the Declaration that were circulated throughout the new nation. So when people thought of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 was the date they remembered. In contrast, we celebrate Constitution Day on September 17th of each year, the anniversary of the date the Constitution was signed, not the anniversary of the date it was approved. If we’d followed this same approach for the Declaration of Independence we’d being celebrating Independence Day on August 2nd of each year, the day the Declaration of Independence was signed! How did the Fourth of July become a national holiday? For the first 15 or 20 years after the Declaration was written, people didn’t celebrate it much on any date. It was too new and too much else was happening in the young nation. By the 1790s, a time of bitter partisan conflicts, the Declaration had become controversial. One party, the Democratic-Republicans, admired Jefferson and the Declaration. But the other party, the Federalists, thought the Declaration was too French and too anti-British, which went against their current policies. By 1817, John Adams complained in a letter that America seemed uninterested in its past. But that would soon change. After the War of 1812, the Federalist party began to come apart and the new parties of the 1820s and 1830s all considered themselves inheritors of Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans. Printed copies of the Declaration began to circulate again, all with the date July 4, 1776, listed at the top. The deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826, may even have helped to promote the idea of July 4 as an important date to be celebrated. Celebrations of the Fourth of July became more common as the years went on and in 1870, almost a hundred years after the Declaration was written, Congress first declared July 4 to be a national holiday as part of a bill to officially recognize several holidays, including Christmas. Further legislation about national holidays, including July 4, was passed in 1939 and 1941. |
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Did anyone notice that $2.5 million was diverted away from the National Parks for this parade???? We all know the park system is in desperate need of funding. What is going on in the greatest country on Earth when we do these things to include tanks in our parades? Yeah I ditto flatbackground’s two comments, Come on America you can do better than that, you can be honorable again. |
a group of drunken rebels had the foresight and resolve to undertake what they referred to as an ‘experiment’ by getting out from under the thumbs of oppression by seceeding from Brittan and a 22 year old erudite potentate, King George III, with little more than grit and determination on their side.
if the aim here is about celebrating how this nation sprang from despotism and a monarchy to a free state as should be thoughts on this holiday, that’s fine. some will always denigrate or attempt to de-rail and contort things by envoking their own agendas and as such, taint the nature of the occasion. personally the Fourth of July is unquestionably the best annual American tradition. I mean, how do you beat alcohol and explosives being in play simultaneously? as for partisan agendas and America being well off from best serving its list of priorities, somehow our political leadership has come to the conclusion it is better to throw over one billion dollars at blankets, and aspirins for illegal aliens, than to correct the backlog of Veterans needs for benefits which routinely forces them to battle for their just ends over decades, instead of a few months or years. that is a truly disgusting state of affairs. Regardless, today if you are an American citizen, it is indeed a day to be grateful we live in the best free nation on Earth, despite its obvious pitfalls, and its recurring problems. |
Those same founding fathers eschewed politics in favor of the greater good of all. They also founded a country where the minority opinion was to be protected at all costs. With the exception of slavery, they were indeed a pretty wise and valiant group. Freedom is a broad term, thankfully. As long as we can avoid having those silly displays of impotent power usually found in those banana republics where they roll tanks, missiles and troops by a viewing stand occupied by a dictator and his/her cronies.....oh, wait a minute. Never mind. |
