There are 239 reasons to celebrate the United States of America — one for each year of her spectacular life.
Each one is as compelling as her Stars and Stripes, the most evocative flag of our time for going to hell and back for freedom and thriving to tell the tale.
On July 4 salute the world’s most consequential nation and reflect upon her glorious odyssey. It all began with a six-paragraph document that remains the final word on the pursuit of liberty, an ideal without which nothing else matters.
The Declaration of Independence — unprecedented in scope and vision — laid the foundation of a fledgling nation that would become a lightning rod for the human spirit, and a guidepost of hope for generations of immigrants flocking here for a better life. Their stories embody the truths that the founding fathers held as self-evident: “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Those stirring words inspired a bloody revolution and severed ties with the British oppressors, but they are as undeniable today as they were on July 4, 1776 when Congress approved them, setting the stage for a ground-breaking and peerless new land.
America was the first to declare the universal right to revolution, embrace different cultures, permit freedom of worship, create the public school, and boast big hearts that give freely to public betterment projects here and abroad.
Credit the extraordinary triumphs to the sacrifices and labors of ordinary Americans who died on the battlefield to honor the American way of life, and created a tidal force of enterprise and hard work that engineered the best production system in history, improved the human standard, and made the American Dream possible for everyone.
America — still in its evolutionary infancy — is a giant of democracy and humanity, towering head and shoulders above problematic nations that have been around since the dawn of civilization with negligible returns.
Independence Day is a portrait of who Americans are, what America stands for, how her footprint has touched countless lives, and why a planet world without her doesn’t bear thinking about. Live long and be happy, America!
Follow me on Twitter @BritShavana
