All the firework photos here on this post are from my hometown, Davenport, Iowa.
Thomas Sowell wrote this piece in italics below last year for July 4th. I reprint part of it here-short, smart, simple..
I am putting in a plug for Clear Lake, Iowa, which has a great July 4th festival, if you are feeling very patriotic. I am a bit homesick today for bands, paddle wheel boats, fireworks, bbq, baseball, and especially bratwurst and beer. And, there is nothing like fireworks shot off a barge, as they do in my hometown on the Mississippi River. But, boy, this year it is HOT! The high tomorrow for Clear Lake will be 100 Fahrenheit, with a low of 70. Davenport will see 96 and 68 correspondingly.
If you want to see more photos of my hometown fireworks, which are spectacular, go here
Happy Independence Day for all my fellow Americans.
The Fourth of July may be just a holiday for fireworks to some people. But it was a momentous day for the history of this country and the history of the world.
Not only did July 4, 1776 mark American independence from England, it marked a radically different kind of government from the governments that prevailed around the world at the time -- and the kinds of governments that had prevailed for thousands of years before.
The American Revolution was not simply a rebellion against the King of England, it was a rebellion against being ruled by kings in general. That is why the opening salvo of the American Revolution was called "the shot heard round the world."
Autocratic rulers and their subjects heard that shot -- and things that had not been questioned for millennia were now open to challenge. As the generations went by, more and more autocratic governments around the world proved unable to meet that challenge.
Some clever people today ask whether the United States has really been "exceptional." You couldn't be more exceptional in the 18th century than to create your fundamental document -- the Constitution of the United States -- by opening with the momentous words, "We the people..."
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Those three words were a slap in the face to those who thought themselves entitled to rule, and who regarded the people as if they were simply human livestock, destined to be herded and shepherded by their betters. Indeed, to this very day, elites who think that way -- and that includes many among the intelligentsia, as well as political messiahs -- find the Constitution of the United States a real pain because it stands in the way of their imposing their will and their presumptions on the rest of us.
(Places where I used to work and live are on the photo, barely, as well as the steeple of the Cathedral and the art gallery as well as the baseball park are obvious.)
