Can we talk?

Happy Independence Day

    We live in a somewhat comfortable world, even at today's prices, unemployment, and expensive health care. Our forefathers knew what it was to be persecuted for their religious beliefs. Many of them came to the American colonies to escape death and imprisonment. Some came as soon as they could obtain freedom from their feudal lords. And once here, freedom and peace was not gauranteed.
    At the church I attended on the corner of what today is Caroline County, bordering Hanover and Spotsylvania, the original preacher was dragged from the pulpit into Fredericksburg and publicly flogged for not having a license to preach. He was Baptist and would not get the license. The following Sunday he was in the pulpit again. Several more times he was carted off and flogged for preaching, there in Virginia, not Europe! He had to take a stand for freedom even here.
    Many of those who took a stand against taxation without representation, or against ties between church and state, lost everything they owned, The peace, the rights, the freedoms that we take for granted were purchased at great price. We need to remember our school lessons, not as exercises in trivia, but as requirements to maintain the peace that we enjoy.
      I fear that as we allow the government to take an increasingly large role in our lives, that we are losing sight of American liberty. We are setting the stage for freedom to be obscured in exchange for medical reforms, and preservation of insurance companies and large employers, Most Americans have forgotten or don't care what's in the Bill of Rights, or how it affects them.
      In contrast today, 65 people bedcame citizens in a naturalization ceremony in my town. They have had to study the Bill of Rights and American history and have had to make an oath that natural born citizens usually never think about. These 65 people were proud of passing their exams, of getting their citizenship papers, and becoming Americans. One lady told the reporter, "It is my dream come true. I love America."
      Being a patriotic American is more than waving a flag or carrying red, white, and blue balloons to a neighborhood parade, though that is a lot of fun. We all could use a little brushing up on our rights, the constitution, and the history of liberty.
      God bless America. Let those of us who treasure it, work to preserve it.