Yankee

Today we’re standing-up the US Ambassador to Argentina… We were invited to a 4th of July party hosted by the US Embassy and the current ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne. We were invited not because of our connections to the embassy, we have none, but instead because of some Argentine business partners of our employer and their connections to the embassy.  (Of course, every American expat with a pulse was probably invited to this same event.)

Anyway, we say “no thanks”!

The 4th of July celebrates US independence from Great Britain. We feel that the US government currently embodies the imperialism from which the forefathers of our country revolted. The founders were the insurgent leaders against British military might and suppression in the colonies.

The founding-fathers of the United States were intelligent, worldly, and brave men… nothing like the men who currently lead our distressed country.

We grew up a few miles from Jefferson’s Monticello, a house which he designed himself, filled with innovations invented by him and books of learning that he actually read… He traveled the world and spoke multiple languages.

After leading the colonial army to victory on the battlefield, General George Washington had to be begged to leave the farm that he had quietly returned to and become the leader of the country.

To compare any of these men to George W Bush or Dick Cheney is laughable.

No, we celebrate the 4th of July in our own way, apart from any association with the current US government.

The plot always seems to grow thicker, like the recent half pardon (which will probably become a full pardon) of Scooter Libby. Just when you think they can’t sink any lower, they find a way to do it…

It tears our soul. There’s turmoil in the soul of America and the only solution is something better… and that’s what we’ll celebrate this 4th of July, that, and how our ancestors fought like real patriots against the suppression of liberty by the establishment super-power imperialists of the day.

It goes something like this…

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 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.  [Declaration of Independence]

And on… Amen!

Happy 4th of July!!