Theo Moore

It is the 4th of July again. We are dragging out dusty flags and threadbare platitudes professing our belief in liberty and freedom. We cook out hotdogs and hamburgers, watch our fireworks, and sing songs about how our country is the greatest in the world because we are free.

Some of us (like me) do it everyday and don't need one day a year to me reminded.

Those of us who sing the loudest and pound our proud, stuck out chests the hardest will soon pack away those "strong" beliefs and get back to the business of at best ignoring those beliefs or at worst supporting "change" that rips the guts out of our way of life. We will applaud the current shift in belief that puts forward the notion that no one should be better off than his fellow man and that no one should be free enough to get ahead through hard work and planning. We as a whole seem to believe that government should have to power to regulate a person's success or at least how much they benefit from that success. We talk about how people are "less fortunate" implying that people who are successful are merely "lucky". I find it amazing how "lucky" I am when I work hard.

I came from very humble beginnings. My family was lower middle class and we weren't well off at all. I never thought of myself as "unlucky"; I wasn't allowed to think that way. I was raised to believe that what you have is what you have and the smart, motivated person could raise their standard of living by working hard. Invest in your future, and teach your kids to invest in theirs. How many "lucky" families were always "lucky" and how many are the result of someone at some point being smart and hard-working enough to simply invest in the future? My wife and I are still not rich. We do ok, but it is the result of hard work. I've studied, taught myself everything I know, screwed up, picked myself up and got busy trying to recover. I've failed at more than I've succeeded in life, but I've kept at it. I was raised to believe that this is the American way. I'll be damned if I am going to sit and wait for the government to send me a check stolen from some other American who worked a little harder and perhaps a little smarter. It is my hope that my hard work will provide a spring board to help  my children get started better in life than I did and perhaps they will improve the chances of their children. This, of course, depends on how much government is allowed to interfere in my life day to day. Our "Patriots of the Day" would seem to feel that perhaps my children should have no better chances than any other.

I have become so cynical as a result of seeing these would be patriots falsely touting the ideals of the Framers that I find myself treating the 4th of July as one would a funeral.

I spent 12 years of my life in the Navy, bereft of the light of the sun on a submarine protecting a way of life very few people seem to want.

I am so very proud of being an American and so very proud of what the American used to be. I can only hope that somehow, someway we'll get back to that belief system.

I apologize for the political post; it's not my way to post such things online usually. The 4th tends to bring out the melancholy in me and I tend, therefore, to wax maudlin.

To you other year-long patriots, I say "Happy 4th" and let us hope that America will come back to herself someday.