Happy Independence Day.
A good time to recall those who have put their lives on the line for a cherished ideal, not just a for a piece of real estate to call home. The guys who signed the Declaration of Independence literally put their names on a potential death warrant, so firmly did they believe in the rightness of what they were doing. One of them was an ancestor of mine, an honor I do not deserve.
Remember and honor all those who have put their lives on the line, and the families who have endured the losses. Thank all who have served so that we can enjoy the freedom we have, and let us continue to work to preserve freedom in its true meaning, not the growing un-freedom that means merely doing whatever you want.
And above all, thank God for the incredible gift of freedom. Our Founding Fathers certainly drew upon their Creator as their source and justification:
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation..."
I know not everybody believes, but that's okay. If there were no God, there'd be no atheists.