Happy Independence Day

First, I want to wish everyone out there a happy and safe Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Many of you, I hope, have never experienced how frightening and oppressive it can feel to have your freedom forcibly taken away from you. I know it's something I never expected to experience in my lifetime, and something I hope that you do not experience either. It's a dehumanizing and soul-crushing thing to be treated as if you were inferior to everyone else, as if you didn't deserve the same rights as others, as if you were less than human even.

But, one thing it does teach you is that freedom is a precious thing, something that we take too much for granted and give up too easily these days because freedom is much more fragile and tenuous than we realize... something I'm reminded of every time I hear someone say I deserve to be imprisoned, or worse, just for what I write. It's a sentiment that seems so utterly incompatible with the concept of America to me, but apparently it's a palatable idea to most Americans in the freedom-hating security conscious mood that most Americans have these days.

So, during this holiday that marks the day our country won it's freedom, I ask you to not only celebrate your own freedom, but cherish it, contemplate what it would be like if you didn't have it, recognize how dear this thing called freedom really is, and how worthy it is of defending... because, the way I see it, America is in desperate need of people who cherish freedom enough to defend it like the founders of this country did.

Enjoy your holiday weekend...