[VIDEO] History: Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Independence Day Speech
Posted: July 5, 2017 Filed under: History, White House | Tags: Amazoncom, American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, Americans, Declaration of Independence, Fireworks, Independence Day (United States), Independence Hall, John Adams, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson, United States Leave a commentMy fellow Americans:
In a few moments the celebration will begin here in New York Harbor. It’s going to be quite a show. I was just looking over the preparations and thinking about a saying that we had back in Hollywood about never doing a scene with kids or animals because they’d steal the scene every time. So, you can rest assured I wouldn’t even think about trying to compete with a fireworks display, especially on the Fourth of July.
My remarks tonight will be brief, but it’s worth remembering that all the celebration of this day is rooted in history. It’s recorded that shortly after the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia celebrations took place throughout the land, and many of the former Colonists — they were just starting to call themselves Americans — set off cannons and marched in fife and drum parades.
What a contrast with the sober scene that had taken place a short time earlier in Independence Hall. Fifty-six men came forward to sign the parchment. It was noted at the time that they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors. And that was more than rhetoric; each of those men knew the penalty for high treason to the Crown. “We must all hang together,” Benjamin Franklin said, “or, assuredly, we will all hang separately.” And John Hancock, it is said, wrote his signature in large script so King George could see it without his spectacles. They were brave. They stayed brave through all the bloodshed of the coming years. Their courage created a nation built on a universal claim to human dignity, on the proposition that every man, woman, and child had a right to a future of freedom.
For just a moment, let us listen to the words again: “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.” Last night when we rededicated Miss Liberty and relit her torch, we reflected on all the millions who came here in search of the dream of freedom inaugurated in Independence Hall. We reflected, too, on their courage in coming great distances and settling in a foreign land and then passing on to their children and their children’s children the hope symbolized in this statue here just behind us: the hope that is America. It is a hope that someday every people and every nation of the world will know the blessings of liberty.
And it’s the hope of millions all around the world. In the last few years, I’ve spoken at Westminster to the mother of Parliaments; at Versailles, where French kings and world leaders have made war and peace. I’ve been to the Vatican in Rome, the Imperial Palace in Japan, and the ancient city of Beijing. I’ve seen the beaches of Normandy and stood again with those boys of Pointe du Hoc, who long ago scaled the heights, and with, at that time, Lisa Zanatta Henn, who was at Omaha Beach for the father she loved, the father who had once dreamed of seeing again the place where he and so many brave others had landed on D-day. But he had died before he could make that trip, and she made it for him. “And, Dad,” she had said, “I’ll always be proud.”
And I’ve seen the successors to these brave men, the young Americans in uniform all over the world, young Americans like you here tonight who man the mighty U.S.S. Kennedy and the Iowa and other ships of the line. I can assure you, you out there who are listening, that these young are like their fathers and their grandfathers, just as willing, just as brave. And we can be just as proud. But our prayer tonight is that the call for their courage will never come. And that it’s important for us, too, to be brave; not so much the bravery of the battlefield, I mean the bravery of brotherhood.
All through our history, our Presidents and leaders have spoken of national unity and warned us that the real obstacle to moving forward the boundaries of freedom, the only permanent danger to the hope that is America, comes from within. It’s easy enough to dismiss this as a kind of familiar exhortation. Yet the truth is that even two of our greatest Founding Fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, once learned this lesson late in life. They’d worked so closely together in Philadelphia for independence. But once that was gained and a government was formed, something called partisan politics began to get in the way. After a bitter and divisive campaign, Jefferson defeated Adams for the Presidency in 1800. And the night before Jefferson’s inauguration, Adams slipped away to Boston, disappointed, brokenhearted, and bitter.
For years their estrangement lasted. But then when both had retired, Jefferson at 68 to Monticello and Adams at 76 to Quincy, they began through their letters to speak again to each other. Letters that discussed almost every conceivable subject: gardening, horseback riding, even sneezing as a cure for hiccups; but other subjects as well: the loss of loved ones, the mystery of grief and sorrow, the importance of religion, and of course the last thoughts, the final hopes of two old men, two great patriarchs, for the country that they had helped to found and loved so deeply. “It carries me back,” Jefferson wrote about correspondence with his cosigner of the Declaration of Independence, “to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us and yet passing harmless . . . we rowed through the storm with heart and hand . . . .” It was their last gift to us, this lesson in brotherhood, in tolerance for each other, this insight into America’s strength as a nation. And when both died on the same day within hours of each other, that date was July 4th, 50 years exactly after that first gift to us, the Declaration of Independence. Read the rest of this entry »
The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro: A Speech by Frederick Douglass
Posted: July 4, 2017 Filed under: Education, History, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: abolitionist, African Americans, Airstrike, American lager, Anna Wintour, Anwar al-Awlaki, Frederick Douglass, Independence Day (United States), Slavery, United States Leave a commentFormer slave and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, gives a scathing address about the true meaning of Independence Day to the negro.
Jemar Tisby writes: No other phrase in the founding documents of the United States stings an African American as much as this 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.”
The Declaration of Independence was not a declaration for all but for some. “All men” did not include people of African descent. “Unalienable rights” were stripped from those who were taken from their homeland and forced into lifelong servitude. And “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” could not be pursued at the end of a chain.
The former slave and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, gave a speech on July 5, 1852 in Rochester, NY commemorating the day of independence for the United States. Cognizant of the contradictions embedded into the foundation of the United States, Douglass expounded for his audience the significance of “independence” day for black people. In it, he loses no respect for the founders of the nation calling them “statesmen, patriots, and heroes.” But he does not fail to point out the hypocrisy of declaring freedom from Britain’s control while subjugating an entire race of people.
Below are some excerpts from Douglass’ speech. His words remind us that for some Americans, independence ends with an asterisk.
Read the full text of the speech here.
“I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us.”
“This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.”
“My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!” Read the rest of this entry »
NASA’s Juno Spacecraft is Now in Orbit Around Jupiter
Posted: July 4, 2016 Filed under: Mediasphere, Science & Technology, Space & Aviation | Tags: Cape Canaveral, Coordinated Universal Time, Gas giant, Independence Day (United States), Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Juno (spacecraft), JunoCam, Jupiter, NASA, Solar System Leave a commentLoren Grush reports: NASA’s Juno spacecraft has successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit, bringing it closer to the planet than any probe has come so far. The vehicle reached the gas giant’s north pole this evening, and NASA received confirmation that the vehicle had turned on its main engine at 11:18PM ET. The engine burned for 35 minutes, helping to slow the spacecraft down enough so that it was captured by Jupiter’s gravitational pull. NASA confirmed that the burn was successful at around 11:53PM ET and that Juno was in its intended 53-day orbit.
Success! Engine burn complete. #Juno is now orbiting #Jupiter, poised to unlock the planet’s secrets. https://t.co/YFsOJ9YYb5
— NASA (@NASA) July 5, 2016
The orbit insertion was a bit of a nail biter for NASA, as the spacecraft had to travel through regions of powerful radiation and rings of debris surrounding Jupiter. As an added precaution, the probe’s instruments were turned off for the maneuver so that nothing would interfere with the engine burn. But everything seemed to work flawlessly, and NASA received confirmation of the burn’s success almost exactly as expected. The timing only differed by 1 second from pre-burn predictions.
That confirmation came 48 minutes after the event actually occurred, though. That’s because it currently takes 48 minutes to send a signal from Jupiter to Earth. Juno started its burn at around 10:30PM ET and finished at 11:05PM ET, but NASA didn’t confirm all of this until just before midnight. If something had gone wrong and stopped the burn too early, the space agency wouldn’t have been in a position to fix the problem. Read the rest of this entry »
American Revolution a ‘Monumental Mistake’
Posted: July 13, 2015 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, War Room | Tags: A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic, ALBERT CAMUS, Alesso, Alexander Hamilton, Alexis de Tocqueville, American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, Andrew Jackson, British Empire, Daughters of the American Revolution, George Washington, Independence Day (United States), United Kingdom, United States, United States Declaration of Independence 1 Comment‘Blame America First’ Journalism Hits New Lows
“The very definition of Blame America First liberalism in the guise of ‘explanatory journalism.’ The U.S. never should have been created so it would be easier, 230 years or so later, for liberals to pass a carbon tax. How petty.”
…written by Vox‘s Dylan Matthews and headlined: “3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake.” …Matthews argues that had the colonies remained under British control, slavery would have been abolished earlier, government would be more proactive, and calls for a carbon tax would have passed with ease…
“Save Harvard University the embarrassment and never again allow their graduates into journalism.”
— Media Research Center Vice President of Research Brent Baker
An excerpt:
American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it…

Alexis de Tocqueville
I’m reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better than the one we live in now, for three main reasons: Slavery would’ve been abolished earlier, American Indians would’ve faced rampant persecution but not the outright ethnic cleansing Andrew Jackson and other American leaders perpetrated, and America would have a parliamentary system of government that makes policymaking easier….
In the US, activists wanting to put a price on carbon emissions spent years trying to put together a coalition to make it happen, mobilizing sympathetic businesses and philanthropists and attempting to make bipartisan coalition — and they still failed to pass cap and trade, after millions of dollars and man hours. In the UK, the Conservative government decided it wanted a carbon tax.
Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] ‘Amazing Grace’ Performed by Condoleezza Rice & Jenny Oaks Baker
Posted: July 5, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment, Mediasphere | Tags: Amazing Grace, Condoleezza Rice, Independence Day (United States), iTunes, Jenny Oaks Baker, Music, Piano Violin, United States 1 CommentDownload “Amazing Grace” by Condoleezza Rice and Jenny Oaks Baker on iTunes.
[VIDEO] Hillsdale College Choir Sings ‘America the Beautiful’
Posted: July 4, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, Education, Entertainment | Tags: Adafruit Industries, America the Beautiful, Hillsdale College, Independence Day (United States), United States, United States Navy Band, YouTube Leave a comment
Hillsdale College‘s choir sings “America the Beautiful”
James A. Holleman, Music Director | Debra Wyse, Accompanist/Assistant Conductor
America the Beautiful – YouTube
[VIDEO] Vintage School House Rock: ‘Shot Heard Round the World’
Posted: July 4, 2015 Filed under: Education, Entertainment, History | Tags: American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, Boston, British Army, George Washington, Independence Day (United States), Paul Revere, Paul Revere's Ride, Samuel Adams, United States 1 CommentSchoolhouse rock sings about the Revolutionary War! No more monarchy. Paul Revere announces the British are Coming!
[VIDEO] Yankee Doodle Dandy Trailer (1942)
Posted: July 4, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment, History | Tags: Academy Award, Broadway theatre, George M. Cohan, Independence Day (United States), James Cagney, New York City, Ron Kovic, United States, Yankee Doodle Dandy, You're a Grand Old Flag Leave a commentA musical portrait of composer/singer/dancer George M. Cohan. From his early days as a child-star in his family’s vaudeville show up to the time of his comeback at which he received a medal from the president for his special contributions to the US, this is the life- story of George M. Cohan, who produced, directed, wrote and starred in his own musical shows for which he composed his famous songs.
[VIDEO] Fireworks Filmed With a Drone
Posted: July 5, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment, Space & Aviation | Tags: Andrea Bocelli, Dow Jones Industrial Average, Fireworks, GoPro, Independence Day (United States), West Palm Beach Florida, YouTube 1 CommentFantastico! Flying through a firework show with a DJI Phantom 2 and filming it with a GoPro Hero 3 silver. The quad was not damaged. Here’s one in HD.
Pro-Amnesty Crowd Burns American Flag at Murrieta on 4th of July
Posted: July 4, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: California, Central America, Flag of the United States, Illegal immigration, Independence Day (United States), Murrieta, Murrieta California, Texas, United States 2 CommentsMURRIETA — For Brietbart.com, Michelle Moons reports: An American flag has reportedly been burned by pro-amnesty protesters near the Murrieta Border Patrol station on America’s Independence Day.
Breitbart News obtained the above photograph, which shows a burnt flag on the ground, from an anti-illegal immigration activist who was monitoring the pro-amnesty demonstration.

Breitbart News obtained photographs of torn-up flags that pro-amnesty demonstrators had impaled on a fence
Opponents of illegal immigration had gathered in Murrieta to stop Friday’s planned transfer of Central American illegal aliens, as they did earlier this week. A pro-amnesty counter-demonstration was organized in response.
The illegal aliens, many of them unaccompanied children, are being brought from overcrowded Texas detention facilities for processing in California. Read the rest of this entry »
Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza: ‘What better gift can we give America on the Fourth of July?’
Posted: July 3, 2014 Filed under: Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: CBS, Chris Stigall, Dinesh D'Souza, Independence Day (United States), Left-wing politics, Souza, United States, WPHT 1 CommentCBS Philly: Chris Stigall spoke with author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza about his new movie “America” on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT.
D’Souza said this film is different than his previous works in that it emphasizes the pre-eminence of American history.
“This film is a film that will open your eyes. There is fear and alarm in the film, but it’s also inspiration, you can feel and experience the greatness of America. You’ll be motivated to love your country even more and do more for her. What better gift can we give America on the Fourth of July?”
He contests that leftists are attempting to rewrite history to change the perception of America. Read the rest of this entry »