Independence Day Potpourri
Those who know me best know that I love July 4th.
Perhaps this love stems from the fact that I love history—particularly the American founding period. Or maybe it’s just because I love summer and appreciate the feelings and food and fellowship that often accompany Independence Day.
Or perhaps it’s just because I love the music that often accompanies July 4th.
This July 4th, my area is getting pelted with rain and thunderstorms, making many of the traditional Independence Day activities difficult. But that doesn’t stop the music. In fact, this morning, as I went foraging for black raspberries in the gently falling rain while listening to some good ol’ Americana songs on my phone, I couldn’t help but smile, as the beauty of freedom and fruitfulness we enjoy in this country hit me once again.
Those sentiments are captured well in the opening lines of America the Beautiful:
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
What we often forget, however, is that such freedom and fruitfulness can’t be enjoyed unless we are first a moral people, seeking to govern our own individual desires so that our country doesn’t descend into one giant free-for-all:
O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
Many in America today seem to have forgotten that with freedom comes responsibility, and because of this, the yearly arrival of July 4th can now bring pangs of discouragement interspersed with the normal delight. It can seem there’s no path forward, that our country will never again be a moral, self-governing people that can therefore enjoy liberty.
But this year I realized that our generation is not the first to feel such discouragement—to feel it’s too late for our country. In reality, this discouragement was even present in the founding generation, a fact John Adams recorded in a letter to his wife. You can find my thoughts on this in a recent article for Epoch Times. I encourage you to check out Adams’ words, and to take heart if you’re discouraged this July 4th!
In the meantime, there’s nothing like a little patriotic music to lift our spirits! Check out this patriotic playlist from Classical Public Radio and then enjoy the following arrangement of our national anthem from the de la Motte family!
Happy Independence Day!
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Image Credit: Picryl
Annie, very best wishes for a meaningful and personally fulfilling National Birthday. You mentioned a love of both history and music and I emphatically share those enthusiasms with you. As regards music on the July 4th occasion, few things are more pleasantly engaging for me than the stirring march compositions of John Philip Sousa, who is about a perfect example of America's former spirit of embracing diversity as I can think of. I say 'former' since the present 'woke' spin on diversity seems utterly devoid of the qualities that previously helped make America one of the greatest nations in the world. Sousa, a descendant of Portuguese and Bavarian German parents, remains almost unchallenged as a martial interpreter of traditional American patriotic music and it saddens me greatly that today's celebrations of July 4th in our nation's Capitol seem to overlook and exclude his masterful turn-of-the-century contributions to America's spirit! My Irish father was a veteran of the Spanish War (1898) and I inherited many things from him...among them a great respect for John Philip Sousa. Today, no July 4th is complete for me without a stirring rendering of 'The Stars and Stripes Forever' and it is tragic that even the so-called 'National 4th of July Celebration' (that receives so much media publicity) seems to leave out his epic contributions to America's martial music. God (or whomever it is, out there in the cosmos) bless America!
Happy Fourth of July to you, Annie, and thanks for the lovely article.