-
Welcome to the TSP Talk Forums forums.
You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content, join our AutoTracker, and access many other special features. Registration is simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. -
The Forum works well on MOBILE devices without an app: Just go to: https://forum.tsptalk.com
-
Please read our AutoTracker policy on the IFT deadline and remaining active. Thanks!
-
$ - Premium Service Content (Info) | AutoTracker Monthly Winners | Is Gmail et al, Blocking Our emails?
Find us on: Facebook & X | Posting Copyrighted Material
-
Join the TSP Talk AutoTracker: How to Get Started | Login | Main AutoTracker Page
The Fourth of JULY
- Thread starter nnuut
- Start date
nnuut
Moderator | TSP Legend
burrocrat
Well-known member
this is a touchy subject. i love the fourth of july. i love the anthems and the "rocket's red glare". but i have not been in war, and i know the pops and whoompfs mean death is coming to somebody for those that have been in war. but i still love it . whoompf! boom! boom boom boom!
i have a good old friend. a 2lt in an artillery dividsion of nat'l guard. served in irag. a redleg. boom boom boom. rain hell. that kind. yes, light it up, free people is good. boom.
i have a good old friend. a 2lt in an artillery dividsion of nat'l guard. served in irag. a redleg. boom boom boom. rain hell. that kind. yes, light it up, free people is good. boom.
grandma
Well-known member
Thank you nnuut...Happy Independence Day everyone!
I have tried to get directions to post a video..but that video won't come on. This is a UTube..help may be required..
Hillsdale College Independence Day Video
I have tried to get directions to post a video..but that video won't come on. This is a UTube..help may be required..
Hillsdale College Independence Day Video
Last edited:
nnuut
Moderator | TSP Legend
This says it all or most of it and is why we celebrate Independence Day!
Fourth of July 2016: What the Founders ask of us
By Matthew Spalding
Published July 04, 2016
President Abraham Lincoln. (Library of Congress)
It is remarkable that Abraham Lincoln never delivered a Fourth of July speech.
The closest he came was on July 10, 1858, in Chicago during one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, when Lincoln spoke of the Founders as “iron men.” He remarked how, every July 4, Americans celebrate those “iron men” and their extraordinary achievement, because we are “historically connected” with it.
Lincoln meant this literally. He was speaking to those who were old enough to remember the Founders from their youth and those descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
But then Lincoln spoke about another set of Americans, the ones whose families came here after the great Revolution was over. In a word, immigrants. Of these, Lincoln said:
“If they look back through this history and trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none. They cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that the moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”
And so we are. None of us fought at Bunker Hill or Lexington or Concord. None of us endured famine, cold, or the impact of a musket ball. None of us signed our names to a document that made us traitors, fit to be hung.
Yet, despite all that, we are still Americans, and the Fourth is still our celebration, because we hold dear the “moral sentiment” for which those iron men fought and died — “That all men are created equal.”
Lincoln would fight and die for it, too.
Lincoln reassures us that this alone is enough to form that “historical connection” with men who in all other things bear no relation to us. Or, as he puts it: “That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
As this speech was delivered in response to Stephen Douglas, a congressman from Illinois, Lincoln connects the “electric cord” in the Declaration with the question of slavery.
“If one man says [the Declaration] does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?”
In a few short paragraphs, Lincoln eviscerates Douglas’ contention that the ideals of the Declaration were reserved for only the true descendants of the American Revolution. It is remarkable that there was a time when Lincoln’s idea, now so central to our American mindset, was not dominant.
And yet we find our present culture riven by a hypersensitive strain of identity politics. We are told, even by some who belong to Lincoln’s party, that we should provide this group of Americans with one kind of government handout and that group with another.
We are told that we must “speak to” a certain group of Americans in a certain way or else lose their vote. We are told that skin color or sex determines whether a group is more or less deserving of government perks. If one disagrees, one is shouted down as a racist, bigot, or chauvinist.
Yet Lincoln would disagree. The Founders would disagree as well. And so must all whose connection with that great and glorious generation of “iron men” consists of embracing an ideal that was meant to be taken literally; namely, that all men are created equal.
But it is not enough to believe this. We must do more than reread those words this Fourth of July in between the barbeques and fireworks. We must do what the Founders did, and what Lincoln did in his own time, and fight against the insidious notion that those words mean other than what they say.
Lincoln believed the Founders asked this of him and his generation. It is what the Founders ask of us still.
Fourth of July 2016: What the Founders ask of us | Fox News
Fourth of July 2016: What the Founders ask of us
By Matthew Spalding
Published July 04, 2016
It is remarkable that Abraham Lincoln never delivered a Fourth of July speech.
The closest he came was on July 10, 1858, in Chicago during one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, when Lincoln spoke of the Founders as “iron men.” He remarked how, every July 4, Americans celebrate those “iron men” and their extraordinary achievement, because we are “historically connected” with it.
Lincoln meant this literally. He was speaking to those who were old enough to remember the Founders from their youth and those descendants of the Revolutionary generation.
But then Lincoln spoke about another set of Americans, the ones whose families came here after the great Revolution was over. In a word, immigrants. Of these, Lincoln said:
“If they look back through this history and trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none. They cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that the moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”
And so we are. None of us fought at Bunker Hill or Lexington or Concord. None of us endured famine, cold, or the impact of a musket ball. None of us signed our names to a document that made us traitors, fit to be hung.
Yet, despite all that, we are still Americans, and the Fourth is still our celebration, because we hold dear the “moral sentiment” for which those iron men fought and died — “That all men are created equal.”
Lincoln would fight and die for it, too.
Lincoln reassures us that this alone is enough to form that “historical connection” with men who in all other things bear no relation to us. Or, as he puts it: “That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”
As this speech was delivered in response to Stephen Douglas, a congressman from Illinois, Lincoln connects the “electric cord” in the Declaration with the question of slavery.
“If one man says [the Declaration] does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?”
In a few short paragraphs, Lincoln eviscerates Douglas’ contention that the ideals of the Declaration were reserved for only the true descendants of the American Revolution. It is remarkable that there was a time when Lincoln’s idea, now so central to our American mindset, was not dominant.
And yet we find our present culture riven by a hypersensitive strain of identity politics. We are told, even by some who belong to Lincoln’s party, that we should provide this group of Americans with one kind of government handout and that group with another.
We are told that we must “speak to” a certain group of Americans in a certain way or else lose their vote. We are told that skin color or sex determines whether a group is more or less deserving of government perks. If one disagrees, one is shouted down as a racist, bigot, or chauvinist.
Yet Lincoln would disagree. The Founders would disagree as well. And so must all whose connection with that great and glorious generation of “iron men” consists of embracing an ideal that was meant to be taken literally; namely, that all men are created equal.
But it is not enough to believe this. We must do more than reread those words this Fourth of July in between the barbeques and fireworks. We must do what the Founders did, and what Lincoln did in his own time, and fight against the insidious notion that those words mean other than what they say.
Lincoln believed the Founders asked this of him and his generation. It is what the Founders ask of us still.
Fourth of July 2016: What the Founders ask of us | Fox News
