Revisiting the dissed 56 of 1776
Every 4th of July collective generations of Americans gather together in their
respective localities to oogle fireworks and slam hotdogs down their yappers
in glorious celebration. It’s an annual day of joyous revelry and festive
memory-making. The shame is that the underlying foundations for the
holiday becomes more and more obscure over time, as modern gardeners of
liberty allow weeds of neglect to overshadow the brilliance of our
beginnings. The meaning behind the memories, both of 1776 and today’s
celebrations, are now seldom, if ever, linked to the sanctity of the day’s
original purpose or the principles and ideals that first made up its essence.
It has become too easy in today’s day and age of cell phones, computers and
instant information to look back on all past ages of history as being primitive
and somehow lacking in depth or sophistication. But which age is really
lacking? It is simple to see or evaluate another age from a viewing platform
or perch that was only made so beautifully possible by the progression
performed by predecessors. People of recent, self-anointed intellectual times
lose sight of that while pretending to be visionaries. It is, for example, with
startling increase, or in some quarters simply too much in vogue, easy to
demonize the very founding fathers whose collective genius and sacrifice
built the very first steps toward what are now considered to be universally
accepted and embraced concepts of freedom and equality.
Recognition, respect and appreciation have long been way overdue for the
dissed 56 of 1776, those emboldened men who signed their names to
parchment in sacred sacrifice, who changed the course of human history
away from the dictates of kings, brutes and hereditary privilege toward an
unchartered yet blessed pathway of individual liberty and rights.
These 56 men from Great Britain’s 13 American colonies came together
from various cultural, career, scholarly, financial and other arrays of
demographic backgrounds, and with ultimate consensus set in motion a
movement that continues today, based on the notion that all people should be
left alone and afforded opportunity to strive for and attain dreams based on
individual pursuits rather than being assigned their fate and needing
permission to be free. We could use some politicians, and a few more
citizens today, who understand this.
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