4th of July

I received this today. All I know of the author, is that he is a "Southern Gentleman."

Read it, reflect on it, savor it. Tis bittersweet.

the 4th of July
On this Independence Day, I will remember the fire of liberty that burned in the Virginia House of Burgesses, when Patrick Henry, a Southern man, rose to declaim, "Give me liberty or give me death." Virginian Peter Poythress was there to pledge his fortune and cast his lot with his countrymen.

I will remember those who stood at Concord's "rude bridge that arched the flood" and fired the "Shot heard 'round the world." I will remember the cold, ragged, ill-clad, hungry, frostbitten men who suffered the privations of winter at Valley Forge because they counted liberty dearer than the comforts of home and hearth.

I will remember General Washington and Light Horse Harry Lee, Southern men who grasped the horn of Liberty and refused to let it go. I will recall that it was Harry Lee who said that Washington was "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

I will remember the great Republic of Republics those men carved from 13 colonies in a corner of the great British Empire.

I will remember that it was Liberty for which they stood against the legions of the king - not equality, nor the radical egalitarianism that infects the body politic today and, like an incubus, eats away at the very lifeblood of America.

I will remember the second great war for American Independence that was fought in 1861 and I will remember that the Republic of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison died in that struggle.

I will remember the centralization of a nation and the gradual erosion of individual rights in the name of welfare. I will remember that no man today is truly free to pursue his own economic course - that federal mandates, city, county, state and federal taxes weigh upon his shoulders until he stoops beneath their burden.

I will remember the freedoms so lightly surrendered by those who prefer to wear the chains of welfare than to boldly walk in the free air of liberty.

I will remember that Southern God-fearing men established this Republic and that semi-godless Northern men presided over its demise.

I will remember those who fought against insuperable odds at Shiloh, Corinth, Vicksburg, The Wilderness, Nashville, and Petersburg. I will remember that they sought only the liberty, secured by their sires in 1776 and that they too pledged their sacred honor, fortune and lives for that principle.

On this Independence Day, I will remember and mourn for fallen heroes who lie in Flanders' Fields, on Normandy's beaches, in the jungles of Pacific islands, on windswept Korean hills, and in forgotten rice paddies in Vietnam.

And I will think hard about modern politicians who would sell our liberty and the blood of America's martyrs to the highest bidder for 30 pieces of silver, or a mess of pottage.

God bless those Southern men who secured our liberty and watered its tree with their own blood. As the nation they established pales further into the mists of history, I tremble when I consider the shackles that are forged for my grandchildren by those who love "diversity" and "multi-culturalism" more than liberty.