It is yet still night, early in the morning of July 4th, 2008…sleep averts me and it has started to rain. As this day’s shower increases in intensity and it’s music changes pace, my mind recalls the esteem I once held for America. I am brought back to the days of my early manhood and am sadden with the knowledge that all those who toiled and bleed to uphold the integrity and purpose of this once Great Country have been sold out by the very government they chose to defend.

Today is our country’s birthday and I, one of millions of Americans who desire to see her free again, sit here wanting to write the perfect tribute-a birthday post dedicated to this Nation.

I’m no politician to argue against the injustices in the world, nor am I a brilliant scientist who might offer a cure for a single disease. I am not scholarly and have no answers to solve the real crisis of a failing economy and I am too old to take up arms to defend freedom in America’s name. Thus, thinking just what is it that I do have-well all I have that I can offer this Nation is intangible, but to me, it is graspable, embraceable, and carries the strength of true conviction… the words of Francis Scott Key.

“Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream: ‘Tis the star-spangled banner!

O long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has wiped out their foul footstep’s pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.

” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!