I am finding it harder and harder to celebrate a nation whose government I increasingly view with contempt and disdain. The American people have been oppressed by this government for a very very long time. You all know that I have very very strong feelings on when that oppression started, but I will save that argument for another time and place. Hell, I am to the point now that I take issue with the Pledge of Allegiance (especially the indivisible part) which is little more than an attempt to brainwash the citizenry into voluntarily enslaving themselves to an all powerful centralized federal government.
A centralized government with absolute power that incrementally strips citizens of their liberty while threatening the very destruction of our society with a debt that runs in the trillions is not what they fought a revolution for. They did not fight a revolution to create and maintain a global empire requiring a series of never ending foreign wars. They did not fight a revolution to create a national government with the power to restrict and regulate virtually every aspect of your every day and personal lives right down to what you do in your own home or bedroom.
However, I refuse to let the statists and tyrants win. I celebrate the 4th with the same zeal as our Founding Fathers. I celebrate the principles and values this nation was founded upon. Namely, I celebrate the greatest idea born of our revolution; if you can't leave then you aren't free -- that the right to peacefully establish a government of our own choosing is the.greatest of human rights.
I celebrate that and not the bastardization of our nation or the holiday by the statists and tyrants.