I watched all the series of Ken Burns documentary “American Revolution” on channel 13 this week. It brought up in my memory all the lessons on American History from grade school through college about our history. This documentary was so powerful that every man, woman and child in America ought to be required to see it and the pets brought in to witness. In a vision, If you had called a bookie up in Las Vegas in 1774 and tried to place a bet on the Americans in the coming revolution he would have said the odds are a quartrillion to one. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” Declaration of Independence phrasing that continues to set the world on fire by proponents and clashing with those claiming these words are heresy. As Wellington said after Waterloo, ‘it was a close run thing” and at times only George Washington’s personal statue held it together over eight long grinding years. We are now the inheritors of this greatest experiment in the history of the world, that mankind can govern himself. In terms of that old spiritual hymn those you won that victory for us paid debt they did not owe, and we owe a debt we can not pay. Our obligation as Lincoln said “is to not let this government of the people, by the people and for the people perish from the earth”.
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