A legislative panel examining the Indiana Department of Education gets another chance to ask about the department’s overreaching approach to school reform today.With two local fireworks displays and a state law that gives a virtual free pass on personal fireworks’ use, area residents have ample opportunities to celebrate the Fourth of July by lighting up the sky. Before tonight’s revelry, Americans should pause to consider and value the independence that today’s holiday is designed to celebrate and honor.
Few nations – even democracies – offer their citizens the rein and avenues for free speech, specifically to criticize their own government. Americans enjoy a wide range of liberties that are the envy of much of the rest of the world.
The words written 233 years ago today by representatives of the 13 American colonial states served as the promise and goal for the nation that was created 11 years later, and they still guide the United States today: “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.”
Happy Fourth of July.
