Once Upon a Time in America

Independence Day used to be a big deal. Are you old enough to remember that?

I remember a parade when I was in grade school, back in Cahokia, Illinois ... there were veterans, active military members, two marching bands, an honor guard made of WWI vets*, floats, clowns, and beauty queens.

But most of all, there were flags. Illinois flags and Cahokia banners, but most of all, U.S. flags of all sizes, by the hundreds, as far as I could see in every direction. People knew what we were celebrating, and national pride was on full display. Young and old, grandmas and little kids, everyone had some version of Old Glory, and waved it continuously while the parade lasted.

I saw the results of a national poll on Fox News yesterday: 25% of respondents couldn't name the country from which the 13 colonies fought such a bitter war. The answers included Mexico and China.

While it's clear that some people were guessing, I'd bet some knowingly gave false answers, just to be what they thought was clever. (Just in case you're legitimately confused, the answer is England. You know, where they speak the same language we do. Duh.)

I know that the curriculum taught in our schools has been deliberately dumbed down, for the last century or so. You can point fingers in any direction you want, but if you're not looking at the Progressive movement, you're facing the wrong way.

Our grandparents knew this, but never told us such a movement was afoot. The Progressives knew we'd never stand for such a thing, once we knew who our founders were, and what they stood for. And many of you will have heard others - like Glenn Beck - talk about how the founders were NOT just old white slave-owners.

Our history has been deliberately rewritten, and that has long since made me angry. We've been lied to, by people we thought we could trust. If that doesn't make you angry, then you're not paying attention.

When my daughters' history books had 20+ pages on Sacajawea, but only one paragraph about George Washington (he was a President, you know) and no one else, I saw red. It took awhile, but I found good texts ... and also taught them much from my own studies.

I fear that if we do not act quickly and deliberately to restore what is true about our own history, it may be lost forever.

When the National Anthem is played, get off your duff and stand at attention, facing the flag. Place your right hand over your heart, as you're supposed to. Be mindful of those who have given much - or all - to defend your freedom.

There is nothing about which we should be embarrassed or ashamed, in America - except that we have stood idly by and allowed the Progressive movement to blind so many of us to the truth. That rightly should make us ashamed of ourselves.

Sometimes, resistance means just doing the right things. But I'm afraid it's going to take more than that: we must learn who we are - and that means learning who we were, and where we've come from. Don't just blindly accept statements like "America is not a Christian nation" ... ask for proof. No one can read the original writings of our founders without seeing Scripture quotations, references to Jesus, and statements like this:

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

GEORGE WASHINGTON, address to the Continental Army before the battle of Long Island, Aug. 27, 1776

* So I'm older than dirt, okay? Deal with it.