“You must not weaken in any way in your alert and vigilant frame of mind. Though holiday rejoicing is necessary to the human spirit, yet it must add to the strength and resilience with which every man and woman turns again to the work they have to do, and also to the outlook and watch they have to keep on public affairs. …
[W]e have yet to make sure … that the words, ‘freedom,’ [and] ‘democracy’ … are not distorted from their true meaning as we have understood them. There would be little use in punishing the Hitlerites for their crimes if law and justice did not rule, and if totalitarian or police governments were to take [their] place ….”
- British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, May 13, 1945
As incongruous as it seems to quote an Englishman to mark our Independence Day, Mr. Churchill’s remarks to the British people – on a date after the fall of Nazi Germany but before the defeat of Imperial Japan, and as the indications of Soviet Russia’s designs for eastward European territorial domination were first appearing — nonetheless strike me as particularly relevant to our current day, as the illiberal machinations of so many of the leaders and members of one of our major political parties continue unabated.
If we continue to hold it a truth “self-evident,” as our founding fathers declared, that all persons “are created equal,” and “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” let us take a moment during the coming weekend’s celebrations to pledge, as they did, “our sacred Honor” (think about the power of those words: sacred Honor) to through Constitutional means apply our strength and resilience, as Mr. Churchill exhorted, to keep our watch on public affairs, and to the work we have to do to preserve our democratic way of life.
MAGAs don’t “own” our flag; we do. I find their parading around in it a despicable desecration of it. Embrace the red, white, and blue, the stars and stripes, and the truths and freedoms it represents.
Happy Holiday.
McCoy's Noise 