Independence Day
First, Everyone have a really good and safe Fourth of July.
Maybe it is because I am a writer, and a publisher, that I have a fine appreciation for the freedom of speech. My livelihood depends upon it. Maybe it is this appreciation that makes me more demanding in what I am willing to publish. I want something entertaining, but I want works that say something.
If you’re going to put a hundred thousands words or more down on paper, don’t you want to have said something by the time your reach the end?
If someone is going to read your work after your death, don’t you want them to come away with something more than ‘clever fellow’?
If people have lived and breathed with the hope of freedom in their nostrils, have fought and bled to see that come to life, don’t you want that precious gift to be used for something beyond the here, the now, the pleasant and amusing?
Independence, of course, gives us the right to reject all of that concept. To insist upon the ancedotal and the frivolous. To exercise our freedom in not making a mark, in not provoking thought, in not cherishing that which was given.
Ironic that the very people that would insist upon putting no value on freedom, that would belittle its virtues and complain of its downfalls would in themselves be the highest example of what freedom represents: the right to be an idiot.
Their very existence depends upon our belief that they have the right to be subversive, discouraging, moronic nay-sayers. Perhaps their attempts in limiting the freedoms of others justifies their own laxness in doing anything with their own.
Well, they’re free to do that.
They’re even free to write about it.
But for myself, and the other authors that have books through Double Edge, we prefer the freedom of limitless possibilities the written word can provide, not the shackled darkness of a shuttered mind that denies the existence of the human soul.
For me, independence is summed up this simply: God knows my destiny and allows me to strive to reach it to the best of my ability. Another human being or a government entity does not. I reject the notion that I should place my destiny in the hands of man, instead I embrace the sovereignety of the God who created me.
Anyone who thinks that Independence Day was about moving from a monarchy controlling our lives to a government thinks that one man controlling our destiny wasn’t good, so let’s replace him with a committee. Independence Day was about the reduction of the control of anyone other than God and ourselves has over our lives. If you cannot accept the control of your own life and the pursuit of the destiny that God has set out for you, then I humbly assert that a monarchy is better for you than a Republic. After all, when has anyone ever seen a committee get something done? The only freedom you get under the control of a committee is that provided to you by their ineptness.
The United States is an all or nothing deal. You either embrace the freedom its founders provided for us fully, or find yourself a nice dictator somewhere in the world to place yourself into bondage under. Unfortunately, half the world now is modeled on democracy. But it is not the embracing of God, rejection of monarchy type of democracy. It is the Committee version of monarchy. It is the worst of both worlds. And the U.S. is headed in much the same direction.
Why? Because the people that populate it no longer even trust themselves with their own lives. It is like a mass, national suicide.
Happy Independence Day for however long we can legitimately claim it to be so. Or has that time passed already?
