Bombs bursting in air....

Today (actually yesterday now) was the 4th of July. Enjoyed a rather nice visit with friends, despite rainy weather. Then at home was a bit dismayed that my neighbors were trying to set fire to all the roofs in the neighborhood, trees, telephone poles, anything above ground level, really. I've never seen mortars explode up close before. And can someone explain the enduring charm of firecrackers? I mean once you've seen them blow up and heard the noise, do you expect anything different from them the 15th or 28th time you set them off?

Anyway, I've tried to cling to the beauty of it -- the 4th of July, that is. Went to Philadelphia once, to the old State House where the Founders debated, wrote, and signed the Declaration of Independence. Saw the chair Ben Franklin mentioned -- the one with a design carved on the back of either a rising or a setting sun. He left it up to posterity to determine exactly in which direction that sun would be moving. Then I think about a young Thomas Jefferson, ink-stained hands, a kinda pompous but very bright and aggressive John Adams, and all those other folks. The flaming radicals from New York, including John Hancock with the gutsy big signature.

Some show on TV talked about how those guys locked themselves inside the building as they debated, blocked the windows, etc. Whoever wrote that show didn't seem to be aware of something the Framers were: that they could be hanged for even being there. The name of the person who wrote the Declaration of Independence was kept secret for his own safety. In fact, this was among the secrets that Benedict Arnold revealed to the British, and the British then promptly went after Thomas Jefferson, who was serving as governor of Virginia at the time.

Benedict Arnold himself led the raid up the James River to Richmond. Jefferson couldn't locate enough members of the executive governing committee to get the quorum he needed to call up the militia. So, instead, he bundled up a lot of the state papers and sent them to Monticello, where he believed they'd be safe.

Benedict Arnold trashed Richmond and headed up toward Monticello. Jefferson fled from there only a few minutes before the British arrived. Hiding in the woods, he watched them tear up the place. Benedict Arnold wanted to deliver Jefferson himself to the British for trial for treason, but Jefferson escaped.

Benedict Arnold had been a highly commended and trusted general during the French and Indian War. He was head of West Point during the Revolution, until he tried to sell it out to the British. Benedict Arnold was a truly despicable character. I'm quite sure he didn't think the colonials had a chance against the British and was bucking for a plum job in England or someplace.

Funny thing, though, when you betray those who trust you, almost no one will ever trust you again, not even those people who benefitted from your betrayal -- surely, they know you too well. Benedict Arnold died a pauper in London and that was really too good for him. I don't care if he loved his wife, who apparently talked him into his treachery. He didn't appreciate the ideals behind the American Revolution and actively worked against it, so I don't really have too much use for him.

Those principles behind the American Revolution haven't changed. Neither have I.

I really love it:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds 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 nature's god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare that causes that impel them to that separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 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 when any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or 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 affect 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 those forms to which they have become accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, persuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to render them under absolute depotism, 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....

Intersting to contemplate: this grants all human beings the right to revolution. It means we have a right to live, and if the government deliberately and persistently obstructs that, it's the government that has to go.

Think about that a while. Especially you folks in Washington.

And have a good one.