by Michael Allen McCormick

Created on: July 29, 2009   Last Updated: November 07, 2010

When I think of outdoor family fun, picnic and barbeque. I think of Independence day. It is a day set aside for pure enjoyment of summer and pride of country and heritage. Whether your thing is gorging on hot dogs and potato salad, or guzzling Budweiser beer? You will have a good time on the fourth.

This great nation was born on the 4th of July, in fact it was eleven score and thirteen years ago that our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

We keep striving for this equality thing, taking two steps forward and then one step back. Our country isn't perfect, never will be. This isn't heaven, it is the next best thing on earth. We live in the United States.

It is very cool to be living in America. I feel blessed that by some odd quirk of fate I was born American. I try always to remember however, that not just all American people are created equal, but all people of every nation.

Now we are engaged in a lame foreign war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can continue to long endure.

I guess the question comes before every generation, whether we are squandering the gifts we received as a birthright, or whether we are causing our own extinction?

The world will little note, nor long remember what I say here, but it can never forget what we do here on the 4th of July. It is for us, the living to enjoy the Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness our forefathers fought for. I feel a responsibility to preserve their memory and sacrifice by celebrating our Independence Day.

For many of us, it isn't about remembering, but simply about good times, good food and good friends. Is it wrong to not remember the independence part of our history, and just live in the here and now and the party mentality?

We also have the freedom to not remember or acknowledge or honor the memory of the birth of our nation. That is what freedom is all about. We aren't even obligated to do anything but enjoy the freedom we have. I will defend to the death the right of anyone who wants to protest. It is the right to protest that I will fight for. Our great leaders of the past protested many things when they hammered out the details of the Constitution. So you may be anti- Independence day. Thankfully you have Independence so that you can freely rebel against Independence day.

Dedication to the great task before me. Which for me on the 4th of July, is getting the charcoal lit, chilling the brewsky and procuring some illegal fireworks. It is from that honored pyramid of empty beer cans on the back patio that I take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of hops and barley. And to those beers still chilling, who I am about to drink, I salute you.

I here highly resolve that those hot dogs shall not have been grilled in vain - that this nation, under Obama, shall have a new afterbirth of aborted babies - and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the United Nations.

A tiny dose today of political satire, not intended to the cause of making Abraham Lincoln turn over in his grave or take anything away from the Gettysburg Address or the Declaration of Independence. I love our country and my Heavenly Father. Whether you do or not is a matter of your own freedom to decide. That is why our freedom was born on the 4th of July.

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