What I Think About: The Fourth of July

I'm sure this will get me in heaps of trouble but whenever the Fourth of July rolls around I think of this scene from Dazed and Confused (I was in high school with this movie came out.  I own in on VHS).

Watch the scene:



So if you don't want to watch the scene (which means there is something clearly wrong with you) here is what the teacher tells this class of high schoolers:

Okay guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth Of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes.

Some people see this scene and read this quote and blow off this sentiment as women's lib b.s. Others attack this viewpoint as revisionist history.  Another select group grab hold of this as The truth.

Is it true?  You betcha.  This nation was founded by slave owning rich men who didn't want to pay their taxes.  Is that all there is to it?  Not a bit.  Those people gave up everything--even their lives--for what we are celebrating today.

I love this quotation not because I'm anti-patriotic but because I love this country so much that I'm not afraid to talk about inconsistencies of its dark past, its present, or its future.   I love living somewhere that we can read that quote, see it many different lights, and still get a long (or at least not publicly stone people to death for disagreeing).

Happy 4th of July.

Now go grill something.