I woke up on this Independence Day holiday morning of 2024 with a few thoughts on my mind.

I typed them into a sub-stack article which I have linked in the description box but I thought I might

release it as a seven minute short form bonus podcast in case my thoughts might resonate with you.

These are just a few of the things that occupy my mind on July the 4th.

Not a condemnation of freedom, but our perception of freedom in this country,

a lament of what we have been reduced to and maybe buried somewhere deep within a hope that we might one day come

to our senses. flags, fireworks, and freedom. The United States is nothing of the kind.

I just returned from a July 4th family party. It wasn't my idea, but I showed up for the kids and the grandkids and we enjoyed a few hours of party foods, star-shaped balloons, and fireworks purchased by an eager fan of bright flashes and loud noises.

Yet surrounded by the balloons, necklaces, streamers, banners, t-shirts, and mortar blasts,

colored red, white, and blue, I felt mostly numb resignation.

Every year on Independence Day, the United States intensifies its crazy belief that nobody else on the planet knows how to properly freedom.

When I was an evangelical right-winger I pounded the drum of American exceptionalism, oblivious to so many other world

nations with democratic governments, free speech, or free press, etc.

If someone had mentioned, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, Japan, Norway, the United Kingdom, etc,

I would have blinked patriotically and held up my Yankee index finger.

I would never betray the home team. We're number one. In my 2020 book Confessions of a former Fox News Christian I

laid out the embarrassing truth that the United States falls short of other developed countries in almost every social

category.

Cost of living, quality of health care, employment percentages, crime stats, including rape and

murder, homelessness, propensity for military conflicts, inflation, life

expectancy, and general happiness.

We did top the charts in military spending, and national pride, which means America is number one at yelling, we're number one.

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