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Happy Independence Day
- Thread starter mikeyank
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Ambivalent
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Well,
Though I can't help but feel that y'all would have been better off sticking with US - happy Fourth of July, to all my American friends ;-) *Especially my cute American boyfriend ;-)*
"A" XOXOXOXO
"The Americans" ~ Gordon Sinclair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn2A6nfSXM4
"I like America - America's. . . OK!" ~ Sir Noel Coward: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vvz4QBgRb8
"God Bless America" ~ Kate Smith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEJo7x9y3D4
Though I can't help but feel that y'all would have been better off sticking with US - happy Fourth of July, to all my American friends ;-) *Especially my cute American boyfriend ;-)*
"A" XOXOXOXO
"The Americans" ~ Gordon Sinclair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn2A6nfSXM4
"I like America - America's. . . OK!" ~ Sir Noel Coward: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vvz4QBgRb8
"God Bless America" ~ Kate Smith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEJo7x9y3D4
BrokeStraightBoys
BSB Owner
Happy Independence Day from the staff here at BluMedia.
andy
Well-known Member
Happy 4th to my fellow (Americans) from deep South America! =) Have a great day! <33a
joeychuck2
BSB Addict
Happy 4th!
mikeyank
Long time forumite
Thank you Ambi for your links to those patriotic songs. I especially enjoyed watching Kate Smith, for they have been playing a version of her singing that song during the 7th inning stretch at Yankee Stadium, since September 11, 2001, and it is fun to actually watch her belt the song out. Kate was quite a gal.
Happy Independence Day from the staff here at BluMedia.
Thank you Mark! A Happy 4th to all of the staff at BluMedia and to all my American friends here in the forum.
Buckeye1
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Yep, have a nice and SAFE Independence Day.
joninliverton
BSB Addict
I hope so too Robb.
stowe1
Ye Olde Curmudgeon
Thank you Ambi for your links to those patriotic songs. I especially enjoyed watching Kate Smith, for they have been playing a version of her singing that song during the 7th inning stretch at Yankee Stadium, since September 11, 2001, and it is fun to actually watch her belt the song out. Kate was quite a gal.
I can remember watching Kate Smith singing that and many other songs on her TV show back in my youth. She had a set of pipes on her.
As a matter of coincidence back in the early Seventies when I was working for a PR firm in NYC, one of my superiors had been Kate Smith's publicist back in the day before her TV show. Talk about a small world!!!
stowe1
Ye Olde Curmudgeon
I always read the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. What a truly remarkable document it is. And we continue to strive for its goals to this day. I also think of my Father for whom Independence Day was not complete until he watched the movie "Yankee Doodle Dandy", the life story of George M. Cohan starring Jimmy Cagney.
I trust everyone had or is having a nice Fourth in whatever way you observe it.
I trust everyone had or is having a nice Fourth in whatever way you observe it.
mikeyank
Long time forumite
What a fine coincidence that you mentioned this Stowe, as I generally am not a New York Times reader, but I am getting the newspaper now as my elderly neighbor is ill and she asked me to pick up her copy each day, and I saw on the back page of the first section a printing of the Declaration of Independence, and I too read it this morning.
The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription
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IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
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It is quite a document
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Ambivalent
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That's very cool, Stowe! As a Canadian, I can't help remembering how she always helped the Philadelphia Flyers, win ;-)
"A" XOXOXOXOXOXO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pZ1brENIjw
mikeyank
Long time forumite
Thank you Ambi for that link. It was fantastic. I knew that she was the good luck charm for the Flyers back in the day, but I never got to watch her at The Spectrum, I presume. The crowd loves her, she shares the love with the crowd, and she is not a young woman at this stage of her life, but she sure could still belt out a song.
I really enjoyed watching and I sang along with Kate too! (The July 4th sprit must have gotten into me today
)
Ambivalent
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Mike and Stowe,
I hope you'll kindly indulge me, when I confess that I don't read the "Declaration of Independence", every year ;-) (Of course I HAVE read it, and had my STUDENTS read it, when I was teaching political philosophy, long ago.) I'm from a different place, a different history, and a different tradition: as you know ;-)
However, I WILL say, that it is a great joy and pleasure for us Canadians to have the United States as a next-door-neighbor. After a few initial disruptions, I am sure that ours has been the greatest (and most genuine) international friendship ever to have emerged, on earth: borne of common heritage, history, and sense of purpose - just as Mr. Brokaw attests, in his wonderful piece, "Tom Brokaw explains Canada to Americans." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV_041oYDjg
So, God bless America, and God bless all of you.
"A" XOXOXOXOXO
"America the Beautiful" ~ Ray Charles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRUjr8EVgBg
P.S. I also have to thank the U.S.A. for giving me the one and only Mr. K., my boyfriend, who is the most angelically beautiful and kind human being, who has ever (I believe) graced this earth
Such beauty and kindness as HIS, transcends all history, and all nationality: "Gloria, in excelsis Deo." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQx2TWgxX14
I hope you'll kindly indulge me, when I confess that I don't read the "Declaration of Independence", every year ;-) (Of course I HAVE read it, and had my STUDENTS read it, when I was teaching political philosophy, long ago.) I'm from a different place, a different history, and a different tradition: as you know ;-)
However, I WILL say, that it is a great joy and pleasure for us Canadians to have the United States as a next-door-neighbor. After a few initial disruptions, I am sure that ours has been the greatest (and most genuine) international friendship ever to have emerged, on earth: borne of common heritage, history, and sense of purpose - just as Mr. Brokaw attests, in his wonderful piece, "Tom Brokaw explains Canada to Americans." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV_041oYDjg
So, God bless America, and God bless all of you.
"A" XOXOXOXOXO
"America the Beautiful" ~ Ray Charles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRUjr8EVgBg
P.S. I also have to thank the U.S.A. for giving me the one and only Mr. K., my boyfriend, who is the most angelically beautiful and kind human being, who has ever (I believe) graced this earth
Such beauty and kindness as HIS, transcends all history, and all nationality: "Gloria, in excelsis Deo." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQx2TWgxX14
joninliverton
BSB Addict
The declaration makes the UK sound pretty bad.
Well, that was about 237 years ago. Even if every bit of it was true back then...we know it's not true of Great Britain now.
joninliverton
BSB Addict
I note that it says 13 states. Sorry but my American history is kinda shit. What happened to the rest of them or had they not been "discovered".
mikeyank
Long time forumite
That was all of America back in 1776, we were thirteen British colonies, obviously all along the Eastern seaboard where the ships had landed coming across the Atlantic Ocean.
