Summer is my favorite part of the year, with people getting outside and enjoying the weather.  Maybe that’s why I enjoy the July 4th holiday so much.  It’s all about getting outdoors and gathering to celebrate the birthday party for the United States of America.

We look back on what happened in 1776 and honor the men (and they were all men at that time) choosing to sign the Declaration of Independence.  It is good to understand what that document meant at the time.

America had been a British colony and from the point of view of the Brits, the North American colonists were an ungrateful bunch.  We protested taxes levied by the British Parliament to pay for wars to preserve and expand the British Empire.  The United Kingdom felt it was protecting the colonists, so why shouldn’t Americans pay for all that?

Americans took a very different view.  The American colonies had developed their own ways of governing themselves without much need for any guidance from across the Atlantic.

Keep in mind that if the American Revolution had ended differently, the individuals with names on the Declaration were signing their death warrants.  They were taking a stand that the only way to move forward was to make a full break from the British and fight for independence.

The prose written by Thomas Jefferson was an amazing document for its time.  To declare that all men are created equal with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was not a concept common in the world of 1776.

I fully understand some of the contradictions within that document.  For example, Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal yet he owned slaves himself.  Even though that doesn’t make sense to us today, that language paved the way for changes that came to America decades later.  Remember, it took a savage civil war to settle the slavery issue.

The 4th of July is a birthday party to celebrate every year, honoring the birth of America.  We know there are problems and I won’t write about them here, because a birthday party is not the time and place to talk about what’s wrong.

Enjoy the party today, then do your part on July 5th to find your way to make America a better place.