{"id":4444,"date":"2010-07-04T13:42:05","date_gmt":"2010-07-04T18:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/?p=4444"},"modified":"2010-07-04T13:42:05","modified_gmt":"2010-07-04T18:42:05","slug":"happy-birthday-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/happy-birthday-america\/4444\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, America!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"highslide\" onclick=\"return vz.expand(this)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/dontthreadonme.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4445 alignleft\" title=\"dontthreadonme\" src=\"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/dontthreadonme-300x177.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"177\" \/><\/a>I am struck on this 4th of July that today is a holiday for Americans,  and that really doesn&#8217;t include many of the people inside the Beltway.  Oh, inside the Beltway they wave Old Glory like crazy, wear red, white  and blue shirts and blouses and loudly proclaim their commitment to  &#8220;American values&#8221; or something equally vague. But inside the Beltway,  they look on the Gadsden Flag with a a feeling of uncomfortableness  bordering on fear. They see in the <em>Heller<\/em> and <em>McDonald<\/em> Supreme  Court decisions not a reaffirmation of fundamental American liberties  \u00a0but the stirrings of some rough beast; in the Tea Party movement they  fear a rising of &#8220;the rabble,&#8221; the unlettered, people who foolishly  believe that they are better suited to control their own lives, their  own fortunes, than those wise ones inside the Beltway who so obviously  know better. They dream of a world of cameras, of papers, of<em><strong> control<\/strong><\/em>, a world where American exceptionalism is a failed dream  and all the reaffirmed liberties so eloquently stated by the Founders  are words, only words.<\/p>\n<p>Out here in the hinterlands we&#8217;re celebrating, and part of what we&#8217;re  celebrating is that for the first time in many many years, America is  awake \u2014 and angry. So you <em>faux<\/em>-Americans over in your little  enclave keep waving the flag and telling us how much you care \u2014 <em><strong>really  care<\/strong><\/em> \u2014 about us little people. Out here in the boonies, a tidal  wave is building&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Happy Birthday, America! It&#8217;s a great time to live in this country!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am struck on this 4th of July that today is a holiday for Americans, and that really doesn&#8217;t include many of the people inside the Beltway. Oh, inside the Beltway they wave Old Glory like crazy, wear red, white and blue shirts and blouses and loudly proclaim their commitment to &#8220;American values&#8221; or something [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-michael-bane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}