The 4th of July feels like a sad holiday to me. We celebrate an independence won over two centuries ago, like an out of shape former athlete reminiscing about his glory days on the high school football team.
What we need independence from today isn’t the British — who seem about as threatening as a glass of warm Ovaltine — but from modern tyrannies like big business and, of course, the national security state.
We made it over a century and a half, but only barely. I don’t think these words were meant to hold up in today’s society. How is it possible that you can quote somebody from TJ’s time and say that it is at all like our time? Let’s face it, he was just a prognosticating bullshitter. To look back at a quote like this to justify the actions of the present is a horrific and insensitive thing to do.
Or, as someone from a revolutionary time, it could be his perspective on why revolution is necessary.