StanleyWheeler

Let me first note that in the Spirit of 1776, I've completed 76K words on Power to Hurt, and I'm offering FREE pdf copies of the first book in the Tomahawks and Dragon Fire Series Threading the Rude Eye. Contact me through the comments and give me your email address to receive your free copy. This offer is good for a limited time. I hope to give away a hundred free copies before Power to Hurt is ready for purchase.

Independence Day marched in again to the sound of trumpets, drums, fireworks, fanfare, and whining. It's the latter that I'll address somewhere below. As for me and my house, we attended the veteran's march in our community. The A-10s roared over at the conclusion (or about fifteen minutes after the conclusion) for the fleeting pleasure of the happy, patriotic throng. Following the Wart hog fly-by, I had to go home to attend to a problem of no small significant. Fortunately, much like the song says, I got by with a little help from my friends--one friend in particular. Catastrophe slunk away in shame at having been averted stumbled to the curtain like an emaciated model wearing more heel than her frail limbs can manage making a retreat from the catwalk. I'm not looking forward to a return visit. All that and I still smoked pork ribs and steak for the celebratory dinner with family--and also wrote a few hundred words on Power to Hurt; I would've written more but the averting of the catastrophe swallowed part of the writing time. The only unfortunate bit of the holiday was the lack of cherry pie. As for lighting fireworks, I recommend the propane torch as the never-fail answer when matches are cheap and the breeze is brisk.

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One whining incident of which I became aware concerned a tweet or other social media flatulence featuring a quote from Frederick Douglass. Others responded that that quote was taken out of context, etc. I've read the speech before, but it has been some years. I took the opportunity to read it again. 

Here's a link to the speech and I've included some portions here which I believe fairly represent the general tone and point of the speech.


Frederick Douglass' July 4, 1852, Speech


"This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day."
...

"Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day — cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight."

...

"Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?"

...

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour."

...

"Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it."

...

"Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. "

Douglass' speech came, of course, prior to the Civil War (and before Lincoln's Gettysburg Address)  when hundreds of thousands of Americans went to war beneath the star spangled banner for the very purpose of holding the union together on a basis which extended the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Those lives spent in dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal consecrated and hallowed this nation and its founding principles far beyond the power and whining of those with little understanding or appreciation to detract from that sacrifice of the last full measure of devotion. 

I must wonder: Does the blood of patriots yet hold this nation together? Although the principles in the Declaration of Independence remain hallowed beyond detraction, if those principles are not taught in union with the history of the sacrifices in blood and treasure that were required to give the principles substance and effect, the ignorant will reign, the machinery created to empower the principles will be subverted, and the people will morn until the tree of liberty is nourished yet again.

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Finally, I seriously enjoyed writing on Power to Hurt this week with scenes of combat and carnage among ancient ruins and the first appearance in the series of my unique and fully armed and operational battle station matured fire-breathing dragon. I love it when a plan comes together. Honestly, the plan has been changing regularly--but it's only getting better.