Never have I felt less enthusiastic about celebrating the Fourth of July. After all, talk of liberty and the explosions of fireworks ring hollow in a nation where the federal government spies on the citizenry without probable cause or warrant; where congressmen elected to represent the people's interests champion mass immigration of unassimilable aliens, without concerns for quality or quantity; where the legislative and executive branches spend and borrow with a kind of flagrant disregard for fiscal responsibility that would land each of us in prison, if we were to put into practice on an individual level what the government does at the national level; where all three branches of government buy into the co-opted, phony civil rights rhetoric utilized by homosexuals in their crusade to unite in unholy "matrimony;" where the Powers That Be treat average citizens who uphold the traditional American outlook like bigots and Nazis and even terrorists, while ignoring or praising the demonstrable harm done by those societal wrecking balls who hate everything traditional about the culture and heritage of the United States; and where bloodthirsty monsters murder over a million unborn children in abortuaries each year.
This is where we are as a country, and this is where I am as an American whose ancestry on this continent goes back generations.
I am not saying that there is nothing left of the old America, the true America. What I am saying is that a great, bat-winged shadow is sweeping across the land, blocking out the light and suffocating us under an evil pall. When I was younger, I never thought I'd live to see the demise of what I considered our sweet land of liberty; but she is falling into decay and ruin as I type these words, like a man succumbing to some dreadful wasting disease.
The only answer or hope for us is revival -- revival that leads us as individuals and a nation back into the ways and the spirit of Jesus Christ. That is where a real and lasting future lies.
So the question arises: will our Lord allow another Great Awakening to come to pass, as He did in the 18th and 19th centuries, or has America lapsed into that final sleep, that coma preceding death?
I don't know the answer.
What I do know is that there is a remnant, as there always is in times such as these -- a remnant who give glory and honor to our God, as in olden days -- who fall on their faces at His feet and weep for joy, instead of spurning Him. If America is to become more than a footnote, more than a pile of ashes in the dust-bin of history with all of the other debris of Time, it is that remnant who will make her so. All of this means reclaiming our God and our heritage, and remembering whence we came.
So this year, I celebrate not what America is, but what she was, and what she can be, again, with God as our polestar, shining a light unto our path.
And to those of you who recognize the worth of our past, and still call upon the name of the Lord who blessed us when we were His as a nation -- to you I say, "God bless you," and raise a glass.