[Tim Murphy]

Letter to XJ Kennedy in Lexington

Uncle Joe,

A blessed July 4th to you and your gracious Dorothy. I began the day at 4:30 by reading the Declaration. I imagine it was received pretty enthusiastically in Lexington and Concord. It’s still revered in North Dakota which owes its existence to the Homestead Act. What a radical idea! Give every immigrant a quarter mile of land. It lured my grandfather out of upstate NY to homestead thirty miles from here in 1872. Of course I think of you every Fourth because you are such a flinty, funny old Yankee possessed of a great address.

I still laugh over your response to my suggestion that we versify the Adams Jefferson correspondence: “If they’d wanted their letters to be written in pentameter, that’s how they’d have written them.” This morning, reading,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, (and)
our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honors,

prompted this greeting.

Your unofficial nevvy Tim

[Catherine Chandler]

. . . and to you, too, Tim!

I've been in Canada for over 40 years. It's a wonderful country.

Still, every time I cross the border at Thousand Islands Bridge and my wheels hit Route 81, my heart never fails to "leap up" at being truly home again.

♥ Cathy

[David Rosenthal]

Originally Posted by Tim Murphy

It’s still revered in North Dakota which owes its existence to the Homestead Act. What a radical idea! Give every immigrant a quarter mile of land. It lured my grandfather out of upstate NY to homestead thirty miles from here in 1872.

Don't get me wrong, I am very fond of the Declaration of Independence, and the USA, for a lot of reasons. But the homestead act was part of a process that destroyed my great-grandfather and his family and ancestors as much as it helped your grandfather and his descendants. It was not the USA's land to give away.

Today is a day to celebrate, I agree, but also a day to reflect. For many reasons.

David R.

[Gail White]

Originally Posted by David Rosenthal

Today is a day to celebrate, I agree, but also a day to reflect. For many reasons.

One of which is, that the revolution cost us our rightful Queen.

[Tim Murphy]

Oh c'mon you guys. The Declaration is the most important civil document in the history of the World. David, Jefferson bought and paid for the Louisiana Purchase fair and square, $4 million in gold to Napoleon. The tribes didn't counteroffer. Truth is, if Cornwallis had beaten Washington, America would now own Britain and the Two Treasuries, Canada and Australia, under a unified Parliament. It's good for the world that Washington won and that those smaller nations remained independent of my homeland.

[David Rosenthal]

Originally Posted by Tim Murphy

..Jefferson bought and paid for the Louisiana Purchase fair and square, $4 million in gold to Napoleon. The tribes didn't counteroffer...

A counter offer for what was already stolen from them? You and I have different ideas of "fair and square." Thievery, massacre, disease, broken treaty after broken treaty, violated Supreme Court decision after violated Supreme Court decision -- Indians paid plenty for being removed from the land that provided them with abundant subsistence and spiritual connection, and restricted to barren prisoner of war camps. C'mon yourself, Tim, you know the story. Everybody does. As I said, I am found of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the USA -- I am almost a sort of Capraesque naive patriot at times -- but there is no defending what our country did to the native inhabitants of the land we have come to occupy. So, let's not try.

David R.

[Shaun J. Russell]

The thing is though, I'm not sure there's a nation out there that has clean hands. I hold Canadian and New Zealand citizenship, and both countries, despite their excellent reputations, have had many instances of horrendous treatment of foreigners / aboriginals. A mere hundred years ago, Canada allowed the passengers of the Komagata Maru to starve, thanks to exclusion laws made to keep out Asians. In New Zealand, tribal chiefs took bribes from the British to cut off the heads of their best soldiers for their toi moko -- their facial tattoos -- which were very valuable on the black market at the time.

Maybe the atrocities of new Americans on aboriginals is a much greater issue, but atrocity is atrocity...and virtually all nations have dark chapters in their histories.

[Rick Mullin]

I love the 4th, Tim. Thanks. The sky is exploding over the city of James Caldwell. And the home town of Grover Cleveland and Richard Wilbur and....... Tony Soprano.... and.............and.....Samuel... Alito.

Well, it is also a day to reflect.


BOOM!

[Tim Murphy]

David, my Sioux name is Poet Who Speaks Truth, and I should have said "we stole it fair and square." I have published two poems urging that we restore Pa Sapa, the Black Hills, to the Sioux, and that hasn't won me any friends in dreadful Deadwood.

[John Riley]

The Declaration was issued over a year after the battles of Lexington and Concord, both of which were securely under the thumb of General Howe. The enthusiasm would have been muted. I can't imagine the outrage that would erupt today if Jefferson lifted sections from Locke and Montesquieu and inserted then into "his" document. Honesty was never one of Jefferson's defining characteristics.