Alas! All the trouble in the world!
Terrorist sleeper cells planning destruction, the next pandemic is stewing in a lab somewhere, the “Living Nostradamus” predicts an electric grid apocalypse, Donald and Elon are feuding again, Prince Harry still refuses to go home, Greta Thunberg is predicting a tsunami of death from the prow of her sailboat and Kim Jong Un is waiting for the Gaza violence to die down before he tests another nuke and gets his menacing face plastered all over the news.
If you read the headlines daily, it is easy to feel like you need a shot of whiskey to wash down that Xanax pill.
Today, July 4, somewhere there will be an editorial cartoon published that depicts the average American as a fat slob wearing a stars and stripes tee-shirt with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, clutching a beer in one hand and a greasy burger in the other with fireworks in the background and a dog with earmuffs cowering in the corner, all under the caption of, “Welcome to America, home of the broke, land of the feeble.”
I tend to look at life and current events with the perspective that it doesn’t matter if the cup is half-empty or half full. If you live in America, the cup contains the elixir of liberty, and we should be lapping it up down to the last drop.
Prior to the Declaration of Independence, liberty was merely an ideal. Kings could grant liberty, but they could also revoke it on a whim; before the Declaration of Independence, in all of the so-called free societies, the concept of true liberty was only available to an elite few.
Even the elite few did not enjoy true liberty. Even those people lived in a cage of sorts, sure it may have been gilded, but a cage is a cage, no matter how plush the settees.
Slavery not only existed in legal form, but for well over a millennium, the European model was that of a majority tied to land, unable to raise stakes and move away to enjoy a new career opportunity, take a week off to visit the beach or have anyone take their idea of an invention or innovation seriously.
In the era of the late Colonial period in America, 30% of children did not survive their first year and 1.5% of mothers died in childbirth. Smallpox, dysentery, yellow fever, measles and the flu killed with impunity and hospitals were not places most people went for a cure, but to attempt to die with some dignity.
Even death did not come easily or without tremendous pain as no one had yet invented anesthesia or pain killers.
The Declaration of Independence and the Revolution that followed did so much more than usher in a new form of government that had never been tried before. It modeled liberty as a human right, one that is inalienable.
It was the concept of liberty that caused a second worldwide Renaissance of both thought and industry, where the average person could tinker in their hovel of a workshop and develop their ideas of a horseless carriage or indoor climate control that ends up becoming a massive convenience or lifesaving contrivance for future generations to take for granted.
The liberty espoused by America meant that a young, Black child living in the segregated South could grow up to become world famous and a millionaire many times over.
Today, we have one school of thought that believes it is necessary to make America “great” again and another school that has embraced the notion that America was never great in the first place, so we really have nothing to celebrate.
I believe that America is great, and despite its foibles, it has always been a place where greatness is achievable if one only applies their talents and puts them to good use.
America built schools to educate children; Henry Ford created the standardized work week and a livable wage; women demanded and received the right to vote, though later than in places like England; the Wright brothers sent our spirits and bodies soaring; Thomas Edison lit the dark while his rival Nikola Tesla perfected alternating current, bringing all sorts of wonderment to virtually every room of a house that people aspired to own, rather than share cramped quarters with neighbors, or even worse, in laws.
The so-called “Doomsday Gnome,” Greta Thunberg, blames America for polluting the world, when, in fact, the United States has been at the forefront of protecting the earth by controlling man-made emissions. While much of Asia continues to pollute the planet, Americans not only banned the use of pesticides that kill pollinators, an American fisherman from Savannah, Sinky Boone, came up with the idea for a “turtle extraction device” that has saved the lives of thousands of endangered marine turtles.
Just a few miles west of Augusta sits 24,508 acres of pristine land containing oxygen-producing forests, and many of us will be headed out to points all around Clarks Hill to enjoy the conservation efforts of our country.
South Americans continue to decimate the Amazon Rainforest, with 200,000 acres lost each day according to a study by Columbia University, meanwhile, America’s forest conservation began with President Teddy Roosevelt over a century ago, and modern logging companies today actually plant more trees than they cut down.
From the efforts of Alexander Graham Bell to Steve Jobs, the world is able to communicate over vast distances, and thanks to the aforementioned Tesla and Hollywood starlet Hedy Lamarr, the very news programs that tend to make us depressed are streamed directly into a hand-held device straight out of Star Trek.
We might also take notice that the equally loved and reviled Elon Musk didn’t launch his career in his home country of South Africa. He came to America to do his part in changing the world–and making a fortune.
Walt Disney conceived the idea of a magical place where families could go and suspend reality in the form of his amusement parks where all the worries of life vanish in an altered reality filled with smiling cartoon rats.
And speaking of the stars, don’t even get me started on the outstanding contributions of NASA and its impact on humanity.
Go ahead, fire up that grill and pop open a cold one. July 4th is not a somber holiday, but one where we should enjoy ourselves and reflect with glee that we are lucky to have been born in the ole’ US of A, the first nation to not only promise liberty, but provide a written guarantee.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter, Editorial Page Editor and weekly columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
