We finished up the town fireworks last night, and you could hear lots of cars, down in the valley, headed for home. I had our back porch speakers turned up, and was listening to the drum and fife portion of John Williams' musical score for Mel Gibson's "Patriot". As I looked up at the stars above our mountains, it reminded me of the beautiful, crisp drums and fifes in the marching ranks and scattered through the forests. They were playing for our Minutemen when those early battles raged. Those fleet-footed musicians were not there to entertain but to keep courage up as the plainclothed farmer/soldiers fought and watched their brother fighters around them be suddenly torn in half by cannon fire and/or bloody wounded by lead balls from long rifles. They were marching into eternity. Most of them had a healthy fear and love of God and they strode into His waiting arms before that day's sun was gone - or years later when all the racket was just a memory. One way or another, whenever death caught up with them they met God with their heads bowed and were ecstatic to see their Savior.
After 245 years our free Republic seems to be gasping for breath
And as the quiet returned to our otherwise peaceful neighborhood, I thought about the solemn heartache, anger and turmoil that had produced our Declaration of Independence 245 years ago when most all men were slaves to a king in some downtrodden nation. It was just as hopeful and tentative as what Benjamin Franklin purportedly muttered to the woman as he emerged from hammering out our Constitution some years later. You know this quote, of course - but I will repeat it for the stragglers ...
An old woman out for an evening walk asked Dr. Franklin “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic . . . if you can keep it.
And I am sad to say that after 245 years our free Republic seems to be gasping for breath.
Al Sharpton gave a Fourth of July wrapup speech this evening on one of the big television networks. In his talk he, as usual, was harping on modern America about the slaves who were kept by our ancestors (black and white slave owners) 150 years ago. He was subtle enough not to name 'white supremacy' as the culprit. But that has been sung so loudly by the rest of today's leftist choir that he didn't have to be so specific.
I remember when Barack Obama took office nearly 25 years ago. Shortly after that, the former head of the new Black Panthers - the woman who for a while was advocating for brothers and sisters to go into hospital nurseries and kill white babies - had announced in all of her anger towards white people, "Obama, he on my side, now!" The White House wisely didn't even acknowledge her comment. And later she withdrew what she said. But the 'black versus white' militant attitude was certainly revived by the Obamas. I remember a black friend who held his forehead in his hand and muttered, "Lord have mercy, here we go again!" And, indeed, I knew exactly what he was talking about. Billy Clinton wasn't the greatest civil libertarian - but at least he let America remain resting from the racial wounds we were suffering from since before the Civil War. It had been southern democrats who had built an entire economy on slavery. It was southern democrats who fired up the KKK. And as even some of the most outspoken black leaders have proclaimed within the last hundred years, the democrats are trying to use black people for their own selfish advancement.
Lyndon Baines Johnson: "I'll have those n*****s voting democrat for the next 200 years!"
Lyndon Baines Johnson, for instance, as most anybody who is paying attention already knows, was recorded on his telephone as boasting that, "I'll have those n*****s voting democrat for the next 200 years!" LBJ was the inventor of boatloads of government freebies. In recent years highly successful black people have come forward to complain that many black people have been taken down in their effortless reliance upon government giveaways. Lyndon Johnson had been touted as one of the greatest civil libertarians of the modern era. But the truth is that he excelled at using American tax dollars to buy votes for democrats. Democrats don't want the border wall because people all over the world - many in genuine and painful need (and many who are not) - will make their way to America in search of a nice hotel to stay in, free medical care, a monthly allowance, and a pocket full of food stamps. And who pays for this? Well, as the great AOC giggled when she was asked about who was going to pay for all of the left's panacea, "The government, {silly)!"
Nevertheless, like all the rest of leftist America, Al Sharpton couldn't criticize Donald Trump enough. I will ask my good readers (most of whom I think have a handle on the dishonesty of liberal news) to judge for yourselves the truthfulness of Sharpton's diatribe ….
"I have to take a moment to reflect on the sheer strangeness of the last four Independence Day celebrations each year. Our former president reveled in the trappings of patriotism, embracing the flag while eschewing the ideas it represents. He put his own need for attention at the center of celebrations each year, demanding weapons of war be brought in for his own aggrandizement. And last year orchestrating gatherings of thousands of Americans while a pandemic raged - due in part to his own incompetence. And even while constantly surrounded by red white and blue, that man never bothered to learn the real history of this great nation."
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And then of course the video was played of Trump and his faux pas in mentioning Frederick Douglass. When that had happened in one of Trump's staff meetings, the left side immediately rolled up its sleeves in the continuing evisceration of our president. But Sharpton, in his ongoing rant, resurrected the whole deal to keep ignorant Americans distracted with the racism problem that could have withered and died by now. It was Hitler who used his public school's programming to help German youth to hate Jews. And today the democrats are using our public school systems to foist a brand-new racist attitude--anti-white--on American youth who are too innocent and malleable to know any better. If we could walk as United Americans instead of black-versus-white, we truly would be again (and probably automatically) the greatest and strongest nation in the world. But, instead, today we have an entire political party who had reinvented its 'packaging', back in the 80s, by calling themselves the 'Rainbow Coalition.' And today a lot of black people are sincerely angry because America won't let them alone - to aspire to reach the stars. They know there are no white hands (or chains) holding on to their ankles.
God made the races of people - but only one human race sent Jesus to the cross. Jesus died for his creations of every color. But believe it when I tell you, there is a spiritual battle going on to annihilate our freedom to talk about the real Jesus Christ in the present tense. And a fake, socially acceptable Jesus has been invented to supplant the true holiness of the real loving God in the minds of his often willfully gullible creation (whom he rightly identified as 'sheep'). God, the true God, in His word, has clearly made his feelings known about all sorts of powerful controversies in today's massively confused world. And the people who speak God's word plainly are once again headed for prison because of satan's crafty work to label the heralding of God's truths as "HATE CRIMES". And, THAT is why our Constitution is so precious and absolutely must be defended! It is the shred of paper GUARANTEEING each and every one of us the freedom to openly state and follow our beliefs! And THAT is why the Fourth of July celebration is so massively exciting to me!
Sharpton finished up his travesty of a Fourth of July speech in lauding and applauding 'freedom fighters'. I will let you judge for yourselves, in what he said …
"Even now, as we celebrate our ancestors and that legacy, our very democracy is under siege from all sides. In the spirit of Independence Day and in the tradition of Frederick Douglass, we have to rise up together and save it. On this Independence Day what could be more patriotic than that?"
Rev. Sharpton knows that our country is currently groping along in gross blindness and SEVERE racial separation
I was amazed that he used "the spirit of Frederick Douglass" - he did point out that he was a man, born a slave, who escaped slavery, worked extremely hard to become not only literate but a gifted orator and writer. But he was certainly not anti-white as it may have sounded! He was a believer in Jesus Christ who had this to say about slavery in an article entitled, “Thoughts and Recollections on Ireland”, Douglass wrote, "I am for fair play for the Irishman, the negro, the Chinaman, and for all men of whatever country or clime, and for allowing them to work out their own destiny without outside interference." He was a close personal friend of a very white Abraham Lincoln. He worked tirelessly for the benefit of his people in a peaceful and judicious manner. THAT spirit? Al Sharpton, in his speech, rightly said many good things about Frederick Douglass. Yes, history shows that Douglass was anything but anti-white. He spoke about oppression akin to slavery in Ireland! He went to Ireland and experienced much of their agony, firsthand!
In fact, our Christian BROTHER, Frederick Douglass should be allowed to speak for himself!
"I see much here to remind me of my former condition, and I confess I should be ashamed to lift up my voice against American slavery, but that I know the cause of humanity is one the world over. He who really and only feels for the American slave, cannot steel his heart of the woes of others; and he who thinks himself an abolitionist, yet cannot enter into the wrongs of others, has yet to find a true foundation for his anti-slavery faith."
Of all people, Rev. Sharpton knows that our country is currently groping along in gross blindness and SEVERE racial separation. When the riots that the left and their partnering press regularly called "protests" were exploding about a year-and-a-half ago, stores and neighborhoods were looted and burned. People were killed. Police were set upon as though they were our nation's worst enemies. And the people who were doing most of the damage I heard called "freedom fighters" by those very leftist politicians who at the time worked against law enforcement to keep those brownshirts out on the streets. Just as I was shocked when the former AG Loretta Lynch congratulated and addressed the Charlotte rioters merely as 'people peaceably exercising their right of free assembly', I did not believe the bloody fact that the good Rev. Sharpton did not more carefully differentiate, to this confused and wounded nation, precisely who were the "freedom fighters" to whom he was referring. If I was not using my head, I would almost swear I heard another call for a street battle - coming from the man who claims to be a minister of God's peace.
Lord, have mercy indeed.
Dave Merrick, Davemerrick.us is an internationally known and published artist whose works reach into the greatest diversity of audiences. Known primarily for his astoundingly lifelike portraiture, Merrick’s drawings and paintings grace the walls of an impressive array of well-known corporate and private clientele. Many of his published wildlife pieces have become some of America’s most popular animal imagery.
He has more original work in the Pro-Rodeo Hall of Fame than any other artist. His wildlife and Southwestern-theme work is distributed internationally through Joan Cawley Galleries of Scottsdale AZ.
We finished up the town fireworks last night, and you could hear lots of cars, down in the valley, headed for home. I had our back porch speakers turned up, and was listening to the drum and fife portion of John Williams' musical score for Mel Gibson's "Patriot". As I looked up at the stars above our mountains, it reminded me of the beautiful, crisp drums and fifes in the marching ranks and scattered through the forests. They were playing for our Minutemen when those early battles raged. Those fleet-footed musicians were not there to entertain but to keep courage up as the plainclothed farmer/soldiers fought and watched their brother fighters around them be suddenly torn in half by cannon fire and/or bloody wounded by lead balls from long rifles. They were marching into eternity. Most of them had a healthy fear and love of God and they strode into His waiting arms before that day's sun was gone - or years later when all the racket was just a memory. One way or another, whenever death caught up with them they met God with their heads bowed and were ecstatic to see their Savior.
