July 4th Weekend

In the Catskills With Loved Ones

We've made it a quarter millennium. I like that description better than semiquincentennial. I immediately know what it means. And it suggests not only that we've come a long way but also that we might reasonably hope we still have a long way to go.

I was not quite nine years old at the Bicentennial. It was a big deal, something special, a true celebration - clearly a bigger deal than your average July 4th. It doesn't feel any different from any other year this year, however. Much of that I attribute to a president who makes everything about himself - and who most Americans really don't like. Personal distaste aside, he has also more blatantly sought to use his power for his personal, non-governmental benefit than any president who has come before. Not that his predecessors have all been morally pristine, but the scale and nakedness of his self-dealing blows everyone else away. Perhaps worse, he has undertaken to expand his power in a myriad of ways that have stretched the system of “checks and balances" our founders so carefully calibrated to the very point of breaking. As I've written here many times, the judicial branch has usually held its ground, and so our constitutional system has also, thus far, held.

Anyhoo, things could be better. But without a doubt in my mind, I still say that this is the one place I'd ever want to live. It's also the place, more than any other, that people around the world would move to if they had to or could. Even in this state of things, we remain the promise and the reality the world looks to whether they admit to it every day of the week or not.

We need a change. We need a corrective for the next quarter millennium and beyond. Stay tuned for more on that.

For now, happy Independence Day and God Bless America.

Matt