The Rebel Black Dot Song of Independence Day

Jim Gaffigan, "Holidays" from Beyond the Pale (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: On first blush, "Holidays" might not seem like the most focused R.B.D.S.O.T.D. for this glorious day, but I assure you, it speaks directly to our most cherished Independence Day traditions.

"Mostly we use holidays so we can eat more, y'know. 'I normally don't have a burger, a brat, & a steak, but it is Fourth of July. And I need the energy if I'm gonna start blowing crap up. It's what the Founding Fathers would want.'…"

Bonus! Song of the Day
The University of Michigan Marching Band, "The Star-Spangled Banner" from Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue (T.L.A.M.)



Operation AXIOM
Two hundred thirty-nine years ago to the day, 4 July 1776, the Continental Congress declared the independence of a new nation-state, the United States of America, from the empire of the Kingdom of Great Britain. The United States has stood astride the world as a colossus, spending blood & treasure to construct an international order that has brought higher levels of both individual liberty & prosperity to more persons than any other polity in history. To-day the liberalism upon which this country was founded & for which it has always fought is under grave threat from "liberal"/progressive forces that wish to replace the consent of the governed with the tyranny of the minority, the rule of the so-called experts, & from the atavistic isolationism that has haunted us from our earliest days. Neither pessimism nor defeatism will beat back these barbarians at our gates, only the optimism & self-confidence that enabled our forebears to subdue a continent-spanning wilderness & forge it into a continent-spanning "Empire of Liberty," in President Jefferson's phrase. Whatever disasters befall our democracy, whatever gains tyranny makes, I assure you that we're survived & triumphed over worse. (I'm a quadruple History Quiz Night champion, I know of what I speak.) Take renewed courage from a remark usually & erroneously attributed to the great Winston Churchill, but more likely from the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban:

The Americans will always do the right thing—after they've exhausted all the alternatives.

Finally on this Independence Day, I leave you with some words of President Lincoln's, from the most famous oratory in our history, the Gettysburg Address of 19 November 1863:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Happy birthday, America!