Happy Birthday America
Toby Keith Sings "Happy Birthday America"
I weep for my country when I listen to that Toby Keith song, “Happy Birthday America.”
On first hearing, I was taken to a sad place where regret is the overpowering emotion. Toby Keith captures the slow decline in our beloved America and her founding principles. Is this to be the legacy of our forebears?
But after a while I got over it. From time to time we must be reminded of those unpleasant things we wish to bury. The glory of our past by far overshadows those things America’s detractors emphasize. We recognized the evil of slavery and spent 520,000 lives to end it. We recognized that some used the power of government to still deny some their civil rights, and we changed that. Our history is replete with examples of individuals, when seeing a wrong, attempt to correct it even in the face of harm to themselves.
One example is the case of the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. American soldiers were on a mission to search and destroy the enemy in local villages and proceeded to systematically kill innocent villagers. Hugh Thompson Jr. an American helicopter pilot saw what was happening from the air and landed his chopper between the soldiers and the villagers, effectively ending it.
Toby Keith’s “Happy Birthday America” is a reminder that we have something very precious given us to protect. The 4th of July is not only a day to celebrate our independence as a country, but also our independence as individuals from tyranny of every sort. We celebrate those principles of freedom, limited government and respect for every individual’s right to their own life.
Instead of lamenting those things we think are gone, let us renew our dedication to our American principles and look for those things that remind us that we are a special place in the world—even the envy of it.
The great Brit Sir Winston Churchill recognized the contribution to freedom that is the Declaration of Independence and America’s struggle when he gave an address on the 4th of July, 1918,
“Wherever men seek to frame politics or constitutions which safeguard the citizen, be he rich or poor, on the one hand from the shame of despotism, on the other from the miseries of anarchy, which combine personal freedom with respect for the law and love of country, it is the inspiration which originally sprang from the English soil and from the Anglo-Saxon mind that they will inevitably recur. We therefore join in perfect sincerity and simplicity with our American kith and kin in celebrating the auspicious and glorious anniversary of their nationhood.”
The Glory of America now is what we make of it. Do we dwell on what was wrong in the past, or do we look forward and do our part in bringing to reality the “Noblest Work of Human Wisdom” that is our American legacy? The times demand large souls. Not big shots, but people who are big in heart and mind. Are we up to it?
God Bless America.
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References:
Churchill’s speech: https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/churchill-on-july-4th/
My Lai:
https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/my-lai-massacre-1#william-calley/
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