HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY 7-4-05

On this Independence Day I've been thinking about luck. I've always thought of it as a combination of knowledge and opportunity, that there was nothing that could be described as pure dumb luck. Something you have no control over.

But I'm wrong. This whole country is full of lottery winning lucksters just by virtue of being born in this country. Just by being born here you have the opportunity to exercise that other description of luck. Where do you think Bill Gates would be if he was born in Darfur? Odds are he would not only be poor but probably dead, not the wealthiest man in the world.

In this country, if you have a strong desire to be wealthy, you can do it. If you think you have a strong desire to be wealthy and your not, you only think you have a strong desire. I believe that because we have this freedom, we really are all where we want to be. There are those who would argue about one being more privileged than another. They'd be right but they miss my point. It's not a right to have something given to you -- education, money, family, etc. -- but you do have the right to pursue it to its full reward. And I believe that we all stop at the rewards that we want at any given time and are always able to pursue bigger rewards at a later time in life. In other words I think we are where we want to be in life. If you think you're not you misinterpret feedom as a handout, not an opportunity.

Having said that, I also believe that some of these freedoms are being chipped away. And most of us are too complacent to see it. The Patriot Act, the Iraq War, the Supreme Court.

The Patriot Act, with it's benign sounding name, allows government into our private lives way more than it was meant by our forefathers. We are sending our kids into a war that is killing them by the hundreds and moving into the thousands for a war that never should have been started. But it was also started on lies and ever changing reasons. The loss of freedom here is to our soldiers who can't get out of Iraq, serving multiple tours of duty their only option is to desert or die. By stacking the Supreme Court with extreme right wing judges we lose the freedom of checks and balances. That chips away at the freedom of your voice being heard. It creates a monopoly on the government.

I guess what I'm getting to is that we are a country of opportunity. If you want it you take it, if you don't, you don't. But let's not give up on the opportunity. And that's what I think. HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!!