Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Civil Rights

Your Fourth of July and My Fourth of July

Juan Cole 07/04/2015

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Revised for the 2010s:

Your Fourth of July is invasions and wars.

My Fourth of July is the pure sunbeam of peace.

Yours is the Confederate flag and nostalgia for the hierarchies of slavery.

Mine is ‘all men are created equal.’

Yours is kowtowing to billionaires in Las Vegas and disregard of public opinion.

declaration_stone_thumb_295_dark_gray_bg

Mine is “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Yours is profiling and discrimination.

Mine is “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

Yours is “My country right or wrong.”

Mine is avoiding “Offences against the Law of Nations”

Yours is the repeal of universal health care and rejection of Kyoto,

Mine is an America that cares about the wellbeing of our children.

Yours is politicians above the law.

Mine is, with Tom Paine, “in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

Yours is drone attacks in countries against which we are not at war.

Mine is “and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”

Yours is NSA surveillance of millions of innocents

Mine is the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Yours is poverty wages and union-busting.

Mine is “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Yours is off-shore drilling, coddling polluters and ‘all of the above energy”

Mine is a stewardship of America the beautiful for succeeding generations.

Yours is the privatization of war and the deployment of whole divisions of “contractors. . .”

Mine is an America where privates do not risk their lives for a tenth of what a mercenary is paid by the Pentagon.

Yours is the criminalization of the people’s protests.

Mine is, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yours is over 800 military bases around the globe.

Mine is America, the pure sunbeam of peace.

—–
With apologies to Kahlil Gibran.

——-

Filed Under: Civil Rights, Climate Change, Constitution, Corruption, Democracy, Dissent, Featured, Foreign Policy, Green Energy, National Security State, Plutocracy, US politics, workers

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....