Annual Independence Day Message

I send this out every year because I think it sums up the issue as well as anything I've read. 

This year I was pleased to again notice a large number of "illegal" fireworks being used. I hope that these people will vote & sign initiatives to stop the safety nazis from continuing to gain power. 




I Want My Fireworks Back!

"Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing...?..." - From a 1960's folk song.

Where have all the freedoms gone?

I was born in Miami. When I was a kid, my parents used to take us on
trips around Florida. There was one upstate nursery I always looked forward to visiting, where they had a fireworks stand! You could buy all kinds of goodies, from colorful exploding sky rockets and roman candles to cherry bombs and M-80's! All you had to do was sign a paper saying they were for "agricultural purposes", whatever that meant.

When I was about 9 years old, we had moved from North Miami, out to north Dade County and started out living next to a dirt road on 2 acres of land. When we got these fireworks, I was allowed to take them out back, all the way to the back of the property and use them. Dad taught me how to use them safely, so I never got hurt or lost any of my fingers or toes. Nor did I ever cause any damage to anyone else's life or property with them.

I've enjoyed having my own fireworks all my life that way, but in recent years they've been increasingly harder to find and buy. That's because there are apparently some people in the world and in the government who actually believe that they can protect everyone from making mistakes and from possibly getting hurt from anything they do. They're wrong because that's not possible. People have always had to learn from their mistakes and to deprive them of the ability to do that doesn't make them safer, it only makes them have to learn from other mistakes. And no one can ever keep people from
making mistakes unless they lock them up in some kind of police state or jail or something. Then they take away their liberty, but still not their propensity for making mistakes and having to learn from them.

This is the same kind of mentality that says that if everything were
banned that could possibly lead to someone getting hurt, we'd have a "safe" society. They want to ban guns, they want to ban knives, they want to ban sharp objects. They even now want to ban fertilizer, something that's been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years, because some fool used some fertilizer and some motor oil to blow up a building in Oklahoma City. Should we ban the oil too? Would we be safer? I don't think so. But we WOULD have
less liberty.

The fireworks banning people and news reporters say that every year a bunch of people lose their fingers or toes or that fires are started because of fireworks. They're probably the same people who say that every year a bunch of people are injured or lose their lives because of guns. But I don't think so. People lose their fingers or toes because they do something stupid with fireworks or because no one taught them how to properly and responsibly use fireworks like my dad did. Lots of people are injured and killed because somebody did something dangerous or stupid with guns too. But I shouldn't be blamed for that, they should. Because if I'm blamed for the stupidity or sins or crimes of others, my liberty gets taken away unjustly. And we were taught by my parents, and the schools we went to, that injustice is wrong and that liberty is right. We were taught that we were supposed to have "liberty and justice for all" and I've always believed very strongly in those principles.

So now on the 4th of July, when we're supposed to be celebrating those original founding principles that made this such a great nation, fireworks have been getting harder and harder to find and buy. But so many people love fireworks that they try anyway and often succeed. It's called "mass civil disobedience" and it comes about when such a large number of people disagree with what they consider an unjust law that they knowingly and purposely disobey it and do what they please. It's like going over the speed limit.
Almost everyone who drives does that, even police officers, on and off duty (I've clocked them! ), and probably even judges. And it seems like the unjust laws are also the ones that take away our liberty. We were taught when we were kids that the liberties spelled out in our Constitution were bestowed by God upon the people, which is a nice story but I don't think it's true. God didn't make lightning bolts come down from the sky and blast our rights into stone tablets or anything.

The founders of this country who came up with those lists of freedoms were people who realized that governments, throughout the entire history of humanity have strongly tended to take away liberty rather than bestow it. So they wanted to put in place some basic rights which they called "God given" rights, which were not supposed to be touched by governments. But these actually turned out not to be rights bestowed by God, but by the People themselves who agreed that these rights should be universal and untouchable
by government. Unfortunately in recent years some slick, very crafty people in government figured out that there's a loophole to almost everything except our eventual death. And they're probably looking for loopholes for that too.
They've been finding all the loopholes they can so they can set things up where they and they're friends always win and everyone else always loses.
That's the way they've been rewriting the rules. And they've been working on eroding those very untouchable rights that The People so long ago bestowed on themselves and us, and thought should be inalienable. And they've been taking away liberty, guns and fireworks.

And now it's gotten to where the streets are eerily quiet in our neighborhood on the 4th of July. It doesn't seem like the 4th of July when you can't hear any fireworks. And it feels like the liberty is slipping away at the same time. Because liberty must go hand-in-hand with responsibility.
If I'm going to have fireworks, I've got to be responsible enough not to hurt others with them or I risk losing my liberty. If I do something stupid and harm myself, then that's my own fault and that's the price I have to pay for doing something stupid. But I've always been very responsible with my fireworks and my liberty. I still have all my fingers and toes and I have no police record anywhere, on or off the planet, you can check!

I don't like to feel my liberty or my fireworks slipping away. The liberty feels good and the fireworks are a lot of fun! ( Yes, I'm endowed with Pyro-mania, I actually get euphoric from them! ) Many people around the world would give anything to have liberty. Many of them already have fireworks but not enough liberty.

But liberty has always had it's price. In the time of the founders of
this country, those people had to stand up to the government of King George and say; we demand these inalienable rights! And they had to be willing to lay their lives on the line to back up those demands. And so it's always been hasn't it?! Liberty has been relatively rare throughout human history and when people have had it, they usually had to pay for it in blood or at least hard work. And now we see governments, in their attempt to gain increasing power over our lives and our business, working very hard again at taking away our liberty. They apparently think they can take it away slowly enough where people won't notice. But there are signs. Guns and fireworks. The guns aren't quite gone yet, but I'd really like to have my fireworks back so I can go out and enjoy the 4th of July and my liberty again!

Proclaim LIBERTY throughout the land! KA-BOOM! :-)
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- Melissa 




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