Celebrating the 4th of July early.

Our nation stands at a crossroads.  To understand that fork in the road better, I highly suggest, if you have not or if it has been a long time, that you read the three most important documents in our country's history:  The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States of America and The Bill of Rights.

I do not agree with Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg; any nation who is interested in freedom should be glad and grateful to use our Constitution as a model for creating their own.  Perhaps if Egypt had used our Constitution, they wouldn't be in the mess they are in now.

Constitutional Law scholars argue over the interpretative status of that venerable document: should it be interpreted based upon the original intent of the framers or is it an evolving document, changing to meet the needs of each generation of Americans living under it?  Since I seem to have a thing for really old books written long ago, deemed antiquated by some, and not really very culturally-malleable,  I'm going with original intent.  (And don't even go down the old -dead-white-men-slavery route.  Reading McPherson's book on the Civil War taught me it was the Republicans who were the ones fighting to free the slaves while the Southern Democrats were fighting to keep slavery. Alice! We've gone down the rabbit hole!)

The potential exists for our nation to be fundamentally transformed into something recognizable only by the failures of previous countries who tried the same experiment.

As Thomas Jefferson said: "A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities. "

He also said: "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

Hear, hear, Mr. Jefferson! Hear, hear!