jstol3's Blog

My parents were married on this day in 1945. WWII had just ended and they were free to get on with their lives. What a time! I wish I could have been there to see it! Freedom, life and liberty after the chaos of the war against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the insanity of Japan! I really wish I had been there to see it. I didn't come along until 9 months later though.

After WW II we had the Korean War, Vietnam, other miscellaneous conflicts, Gulf War I, Afghanistan, & Iraq. I went to Vietnam. I spent a year on a hilltop there. I got shot at some and I shot back some. We didn't win and they really didn't win either. Both sides just lost a lot of good people.

Somehow I just don't feel any more free for all of our trouble. We fight and we fight against foreign enemies. We do what our government tells us to do but we keep losing our freedoms here at home. We can't say what we feel because it's not politically correct. We can't seem to get our government to understand that we fought for America and Americans. They keep trying to tell us that we also fought for people who broke into our country. They tell us that we fought for the rights of terrorists in Guantanamo Bay who want to hurt our country and for oil companies and speculators who just want to fleece us as if we are sheep. They tell us that we fought so some people can be free to do nothing and collect our money for doing nothing.

Somehow I don't feel very free on this Independence Day. I feel more like I've been taken advantage of by a government that doesn't care very much about the sacrifices of its citizen soldiers - a government which has its own agenda which is separate from what we thought we were fighting for.

I can't feel very much happiness on this Independence Day.