Thanks, guys for risking your lives, fortunes, and your sacred honor to establish this awesome republic. Your creation became a great nation for a while there, but soon your successors became power-hungry and our citizenry became comfortable and obsessed with being entertained. We collectively decided to throw out your ideals and all you risked to create in favor of a centralized government that will run just about all aspects of our lives as the power-elite shall dictate. I really am sorry, but the lure of smooth-talking politicians promising "free stuff" was just too great. I know to you guys "Freedom", "Liberty" and "Independence" were solid, lofty ideals; imbued with an intrinsic virtue worthy of pledging your lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for. But I'm afraid the meaning has been lost in the last 100 or so years; having been replaced by "Free Stuff", "Security" and "Dependence". Education and free-thinking have since become indoctrination and conformism. Once an exceptional nation, and an example for the rest of the world, we are now becoming just like the rest of the world. Soon, independence and freedom as a hope for the oppressed of the world will fall into twilight, and tyranny and socialist collectivism with be the standard of the world, without a symbol of hope for the oppressed. I'm not sure how many more "Independence Days" we'll be celebrating. It'll probably just turn into "Fireworks and Cookout Day" or more than likely, simply "Fourth of July" without any clear understanding of why we celebrate it, much like Cinco de Mayo. But anyway, thank you for what you did, Founding Fathers. Please don't look ill upon us in the eternal realm--"free stuff" is really hard to turn down. Especially during American Idol, or Jersey Shore, or while we're trying to play X-Box or Angry Birds on our smartphones.
