07/04/2025
I am the nation.
I was born on July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence is my birth certificate.
The bloodlines of the world run in my veins, because I offered freedom to the oppressed.
I am many things, and many people.
I am the nation.
I am 213 million living soulsāand the ghost of millions who have lived and died for me.
I am Nathan Hale and Paul Revere.
I stood at Lexington and fired the shot heard around the world.
I am Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry.
I am John Paul Jones, the Green Mountain Boys and Davy Crockett.
I am Lee and Grant and Abe Lincoln.
I remember the alamo The Maine and The Pearl Harbor
When freedom called I answered and stayed untill it was over, over there.
I left my heroic dead in Flanders Fields, on the rock of Corregidor, on the bleak slopes of Korea and in the steaming jungle of Vietnam.
I am the Brooklyn Bridge, the wheat lands of Kansas and the granite hills of Vermont.
I am the coalfields of the Virginias and Pennsylvania, the fertile lands of the West, the Golden Gate and the Grand Canyon.
I am Independence Hall, the Monitor
I am the Merrimac.
I am big.
I sprawl from the Atlantic to the Pacific ... my arms reach out to embrace Hawaii and Alaska ... 3 million square miles.
I am more than 3 million farms.
I am forest, field, mountain and desert.
I am quiet villagesāand I am cities that never sleep.
You can look at me and see Ben Franklin walking down the streets of Philadelphia with his breadloaf under his arm.
You can see Betsy Ross with her needle.
You can see the lights of Christmas, and hear the strains of "Auld Lang Syne" as the calendar turns again.
- Johnny Cash
May God bless America and grant us all long, grateful memories of who we are and why we're here. Happy Independence Day from all of us at Plus One in Valentine, NE.
