4th of July

while we are all celebrating the birth of a nation some 229 years ago, here are some interesting facts:

The inscription on the Statue of Liberty—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”—was written in 1883 by Emma Lazarus, a well-known poet who ran with socialists. She openly supported the single-tax program of Henry George. Leading British socialist William Morris was her close friend. Lazarus believed in the American Dream, but she wrote the words on the Statue of Liberty to emphasize that this country should be available to even the most oppressed of the world’s people. Especially to them.

.Francis Bellamy of Boston wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892, but he was more famous for delivering controversial sermons portraying Jesus Christ as a socialist. The Pledge was part of a magazine campaign to promote the use of U.S. flags in public schools in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America. But the Pledge was also a defiant document, asserting the country’s core moral values—“one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”—during an era when capitalism’s individualism begat the greed of the robber barons and the exploitation of the working class.

The lyrics to “America the Beautiful” were composed by progressive poet Katharine Lee Bates, a lesbian who had a decades-long, live-in relationship with economist Katharine Coman. Both women were professors at Wellesley College, outside Boston, and both were active in reform movements involving workers’ rights, the inner-city poor and women’s right to vote. The book that presented the lyrics was called America the Beautiful and Other Poems, and those “other poems” included several that excoriated the United States for its imperialistic policies in the Philippines. In that context, the closing words of the poem take on the tone of strong moral resolution: “And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.”

so please don't take for granted what we have as a "free" nation. let us relish in the fact that we have freedom of speech, expression, religion and thought. but let's not forget that Big Brother is still watching over us.

Take back the flag! Because it’s the liberals, and not the conservatives, who truly love America.
all courtesy (except non-italicized text) of MauiTime Weekley