Independence Day: How much longer are we going to keep celebrating?

It's the true American holiday. Whatever your politics are, everyone looks forward to a good cookout, fireworks, and patriotic companionship.

The state of world affairs is volatile. Perhaps not as volatile as in, say, 1913 or 1938, but volatile. In times like these, when it seems like the U.S. has lost its way and can do no right, I wonder how much longer it will last. It has been 231 years to the day since George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others wrote the "Declaration of Independence" and started a new age. Was this a failed hypothesis? Was "government of the people, for the people and by the people" just a passing whim?

We have the militant Muslim fascists and the Eurocrats steadily consolidating the power of the government. Ostensibly for the "common good." We have, after fifteen years of more or less democracy, Putin becoming a dictator in Russia.

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Yes! Emphatically, definitely, yes!

Long live Liberty!