Here’s what I’m thinking about today, in addition to Tim’s excellent steak fajitas that we will share with the in-laws, and the ensuing patriotic display of vanilla ice cream with raspberries and blueberries.

The Constitution, and the fact that has been amended to increase our freedom over the years.

All of the people who argue about what it means to be free.

Our kick-ass miliary.  Seriously, while I may not agree with the way a certain just past president chose to deploy it, it seems deeply deluded to think we’d be protected in its absence.  In addition to talking back to the television, I tend to talk back to bumper stickers — for example, to the ones that assert that war is not the answer, I quote a rival sticker I’ve seen:  “except in cases of slavery or totalitarianism.”  Many ordinary — no, extraordinary — men and women sign up to put their asses on the line to protect us, and I honor them today.

I also honor the many other men and women who have put their asses on the line to protect and increase our freedom … whether facing the fire hoses of Selma, enduring the police batons of Stonewall, or sitting in a federal building til they enact the damn regs.

And the many other things that make us the free people we are today, including but (as we say in the law biz) not limited to:

People who sport bumper stickers with over-simplified political theories.

People who show up in parks with misspelled signs and no real sense of what the words on them really mean and those who show up to yell back at them.

Youtube

The Onion

Innovators and the people who believe in them.

People who sit in the front of segregated buses and people who park their wheelchairs in front of inaccessible buses.

Update:  People who teach their children about the First Amendment.

Everyone who calls bullshit on easy answers and accepted truths.

Happy 4th, everyone!