Happy Independence Day!!

[tk102]

I mean, just because some weird old guys decided to write some text, we have a holiday???? I mean, really. Americans are so odd. One moment they're colonists and the next, they are rebels. And that's cause for celebration???

I can understand being disillusioned with the United States for its recent policies, both foreign and domestic. There's plenty of reasons that you can find to be disappointed in our country if you look for them. But on July 4, we're reminded to look back at something untarnished. We're reminded that the country was founded with the hopes of being better than what had come before.

 

There is a reason it was called the Great Experiment. Never before had a country been founded based on ideals. The Atlantic Ocean separated the United States from the rest of the known political models. The brave and optimistic men who dared to revolt understood that it was a crucial moment in history where a brand new republic could be created unhampered by preexisting institutions and doctrine. They believed it could exemplify a more noble form of government to the world.

 

Now it's fair to point criticism at the various implementations of those goals, but the Spirit of '76 is something that you can't easily find flaw with. Trying to do so on July 4 will give you attention perhaps, but I doubt that it will be the kind you seek.

 

Happy b-day America. Go on with you corrupt government & poor policies. Yay yay yay.

That's more like it. sorta

[Ulmont]

ROTFL. Tk, you just sucessfully made me fall asleap. Man. Now I regreat posting. I ACTUALLY HAD TO READ LIKE 3 PARAGRAPHS HERE. lolls j.k. Hey, IDC if people read what I wright. And if they are angry, well, I probably deserve it.

[Jae Onasi]

George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

 

The US might have its flaws, just like any country does, but I'm still damn proud to be American. You can either gripe about the problems here or get off your duff and try to do something to make it better. I've chosen the latter by getting involved in a church that is very active in helping both the local community with the food bank and local shelter, and various missions around the world (medical missions, helping buy mosquito nets for the poor in areas with high incidences of malaria, etc.).

 

Find something that you can do to help make the US better, too, even if it's something as simple as picking up trash in the local park. This country is only as good as the people in it.

 

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

[Rogue Nine]

ROTFL. Tk, you just sucessfully made me fall asleap. Man. Now I regreat posting. I ACTUALLY HAD TO READ LIKE 3 PARAGRAPHS HERE. lolls j.k. Hey, IDC if people read what I wright. And if they are angry, well, I probably deserve it.

 

 

If you can do nothing more than make trollish comments about how unpatriotic you are, I suggest you find another thread to post in because it got old the first time you posted how much you hate America.

 

Thanks.

[Rev7]

George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

 

The US might have its flaws, just like any country does, but I'm still damn proud to be American. You can either gripe about the problems here or get off your duff and try to do something to make it better.

 

Find something that you can do to help make the US better, too, even if it's something as simple as picking up trash in the local park. This country is only as good as the people in it.

QFE. If you don't like it, try to change it and make it better. Someone has to.

[Point Man]

Happy Independence Day to all!

 

It was 232 years ago that a brave group of men took a leap of faith that led to the founding of the greatest country the world has known. My prayer is that we will always remember the courage it took for them to do so and act in a manner deserving of their efforts.

[Arcesious]

I honestly don't really pay much attention to the meaning of July 4th besides its basic meaning. All I care about is the music, parties, food, and fireworks. To me, it's just one of those days set aside where I get to have some fun. And having fun the way you want to- that's the American way. Whether you're an american or a foreigner, it's still the 'American' way, that way being that all that really matters is to just enjoy life and have some fun.

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

[True_Avery]

^^

Two of the small hand full of reasons I still willingly stay in this country.

 

Happy Independence Day to all!

 

It was 232 years ago that a brave group of men took a leap of faith that led to the founding of the greatest country the world has known. My prayer is that we will always remember the courage it took for them to do so and act in a manner deserving of their efforts.

In honor of them, let us have a little History lesson:

 

Let us start off with the first humans to actually deserve the title of "discovering" North America:

The First Native Americans who crossed a frozen land bridge from roughly 10 to 20 thousand years ago. Some even consider as far back as 40 thousand years. After the ice age ended 10,000 years ago, the ice bridge melted and the humans in North America were now permanent natives.

 

And now every body else.

The Egyptian Pyramid Builders:

According to Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian sailor and anthropologist, a group of Egyptian pyramid builders crossed the Atlantic on a papyrus boat and landed in Central America, teaching the locals how to build pyramids. To prove that it was at least possible, Heyerdahl had a boat constructed from papyrus which he called the Ra. He attempted to cross the Atlantic in this and almost succeeded. Later, in 1970, he successfully conquered the ocean, making it the whole way across in his second papyrus boat, the Ra II. The Ra II is on display in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Bygdo, Oslo, Norway.

 

The original journey of the pyramid builders must have happened before about 2000 BC, as the art of pyramid building died out in Egypt at that time. Strangely, the people of Central America waited for about two and-a-half thousand years before they tried to build any pyramids. At this stage, they had of course forgotten the exact details, and American pyramids are totally different from Egyptian ones as a result.

 

The Lost Tribe of Israel:

According to Joseph Smith Jr, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a group of Israelites made the difficult journey from the Eastern Mediterranean to America. There they wrote down an extra book of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and engraved it on gold plates. According to the Testimony of Eight Witnesses, Smith showed these plates to some people

 

The Carthaginians:

In classical times, Carthage was a major city on the North coast of Africa. The people of Carthage (the Carthaginians) had originally come from Phoenicia in the Eastern Mediterranean. They were great sailors and inherited their seamanship from their Phoenician ancestors. As well as sailing throughout the Mediterranean, it is known that they went through the Straits of Gibraltar and explored the Atlantic coasts of Spain and North Africa. The Greek historian Herodotus records that they eventually sailed the whole way around Africa.

 

Another Greek historian, Diodorus, reported in 100 BC that the Carthaginians knew of a large island far out in the Atlantic which had many mountains and large navigable rivers. This island was a great source of wealth to them but they kept its location secret. They had discovered it by accident when a ship sailing down the coast of Africa was blown off course by a storm.

 

In recent times, a historian by the name of Mark McMenamin claims to have discovered a map of the world on coins made in Carthage in the period 350 - 320 BC. At the bottom of the coin are some unexplained blobs, which McMenamin says show the Mediterranean, with Africa below, Asia to the right and Europe on top. Great Britain and Ireland can be seen to the north of Europe. To the left is another continent, which could only be America.

 

St Brendan the Navigator:

The ancient annals of Ireland include a detailed account of St Brendan the Navigator, who in the 6th Century sailed across the sea to a new world with a group of acolytes. He used a currach, which is a type of boat still used in the west of Ireland. It consists of a frame of wood covered in animal skin and then tarred.

 

Tim Severin, author and explorer, was inspired by the story and by the feats of Heyerdahl. He built a replica, called it the 'Brendan' and in 1976 he sailed across the Atlantic in it with a crew of five, proving that it could be done. Severin's boat is on display in the Craggaunowen Project, Quin, County Clare, Ireland.

 

Eirik the Red:

Around the 10th Century AD, the Norwegian Vikings sailed the whole of the North Atlantic. As their boats were equipped with keels, they were much more stable than any of their predecessors. There is no doubt that the Vikings were great navigators. They established colonies in Scotland, Ireland, the Faroe islands and Iceland.

 

In 982 AD, a Viking by the name of Eirik the Red discovered Greenland, which is geologically part of the continent of North America. Although Greenland is mainly covered in ice, there is habitable land around the edges. Eirik invented the name Greenland to make the country sound inviting and to encourage people to live there. In the 10th century the climate was milder than it is today and a colony of Vikings survived in Greenland for about four hundred years.

 

And now that we have the supposed “discoverers” down, it is now time for the origins of the name “America”:

 

Amerigo Vespucci:

Vespucci was a merchant from Florence. In 1505, he published a letter claiming that he had led four expeditions to the Americas. On the first of these, in 1497, he had visited South America, making him the first person to explore that continent. There is no evidence other than this letter that he led such an expedition. It is more likely that he accompanied Spanish and Portuguese trips.

 

Such a ludicrous claim should have been long forgotten. But a German map maker called Martin Waldseemüller, from the town of St Dié in the Vosges Mountains (now in France), believed Vespucci's claim. He decided that the continent should be named in honor of its discoverer, so he made up the name 'America', by converting 'Amerigo' into Latin, the language of scholars, and then making it feminine to match the other continents (Europa, Asia and Africa). The name America first appeared on Waldseemüller's map of the world, referring only to what is now South America. Gradually, the name caught on and eventually became applied to North America as well, and that is why we call this country America.

 

And this is the Elementary School History Class “discoverer” of America, and a man that we even have a holiday for:

 

Christopher Columbus:

It was known since the time of the Ancient Greeks that the world was round. One Greek, Eratosthenes, had even calculated the size of the planet by careful observation of the sun and a bit of elementary mathematics. The Monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai still has an icon — painted 500 years before Columbus — which shows Jesus ruling over a spherical earth. in the third century B.C. Arab scientists had developed a whole discipline of geography and measurement, and in the tenth century A.D., Al Maqdisi described the earth with 360 degrees of longitude and 180 degrees of latitude. Columbus seriously believed that he could get to Japan and China in a few weeks by sailing west from Spain. He didn't know about America and the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean in the way.

 

In 1492, Columbus set sail and went down in history as discovering America. He landed in the Caribbean and saw various islands before returning to Europe, but never even saw the mainland of either North or South America. He never knew what it was that he had discovered, being convinced that he was in Asia and that Cuba was in fact part of the Asian mainland. Columbus takes the credit for naming the islands 'The Indies' and the inhabitants 'Indians' because he thought he was in south-east Asia. Nowadays, the islands are called the West Indies to distinguish them from the East Indies.

 

This myth of the pawned jewels obscures the true and more sinister story of how Columbus financed his trip. The Spanish monarch invested in his excursion, but only on the condition that Columbus would repay this investment with profit by bringing back gold, spices, and other tribute from Asia. This pressing need to repay his debt underlies the frantic tone of Columbus' diaries as he raced from one Caribbean island to the next, stealing anything of value. After he failed to contact the emperor of China, the traders of India, or the merchants of Japan, Columbus decided to pay for his voyage in the one important commodity he had found in ample supply — human lives.

 

He seized 1,200 Taino Indians from the island of Hispaniola, crammed as many onto his ships as would fit, and sent them to Spain, where they were paraded naked through the streets of Seville and sold as slaves in 1495. Columbus tore children from their parents, husbands from wives. On board Columbus' slave ships, hundreds died; the sailors tossed the Indian bodies into the Atlantic.

 

Because Columbus captured more Indian slaves than he could transport to Spain in his small ships, he put them to work in mines and plantations which he, his family, and followers created throughout the Caribbean. His marauding band hunted Indians for sport and profit — beating, raping, torturing, killing, and then using the Indian bodies as food for their hunting dogs. Within four years of Columbus' arrival on Hispaniola, his men had killed or exported one-third of the original Indian population of 300,000.

 

Now onto a founding father.

 

Thomas Jefferson:

Jefferson was morally opposed to slavery. He felt it was evil and wrong. His original draft of the Declaration of Independence condemned it in no uncertain terms. As Governor of Virginia he proposed legislation to abolish it. Despite his moral opposition though, he owned a significant number of slaves. Jefferson also wrote laws in Virginia that provided against intermarriage and for the pursuit and capture of runaway slaves. But Jefferson chose personal wealth over freeing his slaves. In his early life, noting prevented Jefferson from freeing his slaves but Jefferson chose not to do so. Slaves were money, and Jefferson loved money more than freedom for slaves. Later in his life, and after leading a very rich and expensive life, Jefferson was so indebted that he could not free his slaves if he wanted to. Jefferson, in fact, filed bankruptcy during a time when bankruptcy was viewed as a strong sign of personal weakness. Jefferson did however free Sally Hemings and their children.

 

Who was Sally Hemings? She was a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson, inherited through his wife Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson (October 19/30, 1748 - September 6, 1782) when her father died. Sally's mother Betsy or Betty was said to be the daughter of a black slave woman and a white ship captain; Betsy's children were said to have been fathered by her owner, John Wayles, making Sally a half-sister of Jefferson's wife. From 1784, Sally apparently served as a maid and companion of Mary Jefferson, Jefferson's youngest daughter. In 1787, Jefferson, serving the new United States government as a diplomat in Paris, sent for his younger daughter to join him, and Sally was sent with Mary. After a brief stop in London to stay with John and Abigail Adams, Sally and Mary arrived in Paris.

 

In Paris, he and Sally grew a relationship that eventually turned sexual. At the age of 14, she became pregnant. It is debated to whether the child lived or not, but it is generally accepted that the child died very young. Out of the hundreds of slaves he owned, Jefferson freed only two slaves in his lifetime, and five in his will - all from the Hemings family.

 

-----------------

 

The rest is history, and United States History classes tend to get a lot of the rest right. America was found with Natives living there which led to possibly one of the largest genocides in human history; over 50 million natives. Then the enslavement of Africans and their eventual freedom, making the United States slavery over African Americans to be possibly the worst example of slavery since the Egyptian enslavement of the jews.

 

But, that's all history. I'll admit we moved past a lot of that and are a different nation today. I feel it is good to look back on the mistakes of our past, however, I also believe that many of those that came before us made a lot of mistakes. I do not honor Columbus, and do not honor our founding fathers. I thank them for making the mistakes first, but that does not excuse the mistakes.

 

This country, like most countries, was found on blood and slavery and we do not seem to be attempting to break that principle. We may not have Native Americans and Africans as slaves anymore, but we still use the slave labor of illegal aliens and sweat houses overseas. Just like our first founding fathers, the United States is pretty independent and arrogant in its belief that it has power that no other country has.

 

Times have changed, but habits die hard. I still see this country as a lazy, arrogant, pompous, homophobic, racist, crack addict, teenage fanatic. He is a teenager that has been thrown into a bunch of adults that have had much longer to mature and get their act together. Like the countries before him, he will age and mature over time. He will make huge mistakes; mistakes that are going to hit him even though he had plenty of time to avoid them. He will change his mind on many things, and may even lose himself to a dictatorship at one point.

 

He is not the greatest country in the history of the world. He never has been. Never will be. He strives to be so, but only shows how truly immature and insecure he really is. True maturity is when you see yourself as equals to the others. When he looks past the absolute lie he has told himself and sees others and what they have done and what they have.... sees how long they have been around. Then... Then he may be able to set aside his self absorbed patriotism and move on to join those that he has pushed away.

 

It is like saying, openly, that you are the greatest human being that has ever lived in the history of the world.

 

Because, after all, would you respect a crack addict that spits in your face every day and insults you, openly telling you at all times that he is better than you? Would you be friends with a co-worker that walks into work every day and openly tells every single person there that he is the greatest person there, and the greatest person that has ever worked there in all time, even though you've worked there for 30 years, and he's been around for 2?

 

But, time ages. If he is lucky, time will age him into a wise sage. And every birthday, he gets closer to that goal. Even if that does take the hundreds and hundreds of years the others had to go through.

 

So, in honor of that ideal...

Happy Birthday America.

Keep going. You'll get there. One day.

[jonathan7]

The Lost Tribe of Israel:

According to Joseph Smith Jr, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a group of Israelites made the difficult journey from the Eastern Mediterranean to America. There they wrote down an extra book of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and engraved it on gold plates. According to the Testimony of Eight Witnesses, Smith showed these plates to some people

 

This isn't history; this is fiction. There is no evidence of the above

[True_Avery]

This isn't history; this is fiction. There is no evidence of the above

Shhhh. It was worth throwing in for fun

 

Who doesn't love some home brewed religion.

[Pho3nix]

I usually take American patriotism with a grain of salt, so to speak. It's kind of a cultural thing, and I understand and accept/respect that, for the most part anyway. Still, good post True_Avery.

 

Happy belated Independence Day America. <3

[jonathan7]

Shhhh. It was worth throwing in for fun

 

 

Who doesn't love some home brewed religion.

 

This site would about cover it; http://trialsofascension.net/mormon.html

[Quanon]

Lets hope that ancient ice-bridge freezes over again, so the russians can invade, wohaaa !

 

Then, I can have C&C in the news

[Ctrl Alt Del]

Let us start off with the first humans to actually deserve the title of "discovering" North America:

The First Native Americans who crossed a frozen land bridge from roughly 10 to 20 thousand years ago. Some even consider as far back as 40 thousand years. After the ice age ended 10,000 years ago, the ice bridge melted and the humans in North America were now permanent natives.

That's but one of the accepted theories. You ought to write the others down and honestly try to bore us to death.

[Totenkopf]

Lets hope that ancient ice-bridge freezes over again, so the chinese can invade, wohaaa !

 

More like this. This way China can export it's surplus population over here w/o the use of ships and planes.

[Rachel_Ewok]

I posted that, not The Source.

 

 

That's so wierd... I hit your quote button... Ah well, I fixed it. ^^

 

@ The Doctor: Thank you for that information, I had no idea about that little bit of history regarding the national anthem... (Sorta like when I found out that Amazing Grace's tune came from a song sung by the African slaves that the writer John Newton was transporting... *shrugs* you learn something new every day. )

[Exile007]

I think you've borrowed our land for far too long, time to give it back to the English!

 

But we just became a world superpower 100 years ago!

 

Anyway, happy birthday America! May we take this time to celebrate the birth of our nation and to get rid of the corruption.

[Serpentine Cougar]

Wow, Avery, what a history lesson!

[Jeff]

A bit late, but hope everyone had a nice 4th!

 

Oh, kind of funny story. I was at a friends house that night and I was getting ready to leave when my friend asks me "does it look like that person's deck is on fire?" So we had to get a bunch of buckets of water and put it out, luckily it hadn't spread very much it was just the end of his deck but it was lucky we caught it when we did.

[Chevron 7 locke]

on the 4th...my friends and i set many things on fire...(It all belonged to either me or him)