I think we are lucky to be living in America.
The United States may not be number one in a lot of the measured “categories” anymore, but for the most part, we stay up there.
We are still ranked by many to have the number one education system in the world. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/best-countries-for-education.
And we are still the richest country in the world as ranked by GDP – Gross Domestic Product. https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/
However, we no longer have the wholesome reputation we once used to have. We didn’t even make it in the top ten of the “safest” countries in the world. Iceland, New Zealand, and Portugal hold the top three spots. We have more guns. And where there are guns, there is danger and death.
But I didn’t mean to get into a series of rankings here. I only wished to illustrate that America has it pretty good. We have many things other countries do not. We are spoiled in that way, as this is a country of “convenience.”
Maybe it isn’t how George W., John A., Thomas J., and Alex H. thought it would be. But they went to war to make this place happen—this grand experiment.
And so it was on this date, April 19, 1775, when the American Revolutionary War began. It all commenced with a battle between British soldiers and American revolutionaries at Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts.
That famous first shot of the war? Yes, that so-called “shot heard ’round the world?” It turns out, the term actually comes from a poem, “Concord Hymn”, by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
The bridge in the poem was actually called North Bridge in Concord. It has been established that the first shots were on that bridge, taken by American soldiers acting under orders. It is also where the first British fatalities were recorded, as well as their subsequent retreat.
The war took eight long years before it ended. Throughout the course of the war, an estimated 6,800 Americans were killed in action. Another 6,100 were wounded, and more than 20,000 were taken prisoner. There were many more casualties along the way. (And I hate that they call the casualties, as there is nothing casual about losing a loved one. And yet.) Historians believe that at least an additional 17,000 deaths were the result of disease. This would include about 8,000–12,000 who died while prisoners of war.
And after all of that? The independence of a new country was born. Those first scrawny thirteen colonies became the United States of America.
Since that time, we have all shared in this newfound freedom. But, that is what most people are forgetting these days. We ALL were awarded this freedom, not just a select few, who don’t like women, or blacks, or homosexuals, or people forging new lives here from other countries.
You see?
“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.”
May freedom reign.
Here and around the entire world.
=========
“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”
— Aung San Suu Kyi
==========
“Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.”
— Herbert Hoover
==========
“May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.”
— Peter Marshall
==========
