July 4, 2013

Today as I get ready to chow down on a hot dog, watch a neighborhood parade, and enjoy watching the “Yingling Three – Lila, Rebecca, and Frances Lee” scream with delight at fireworks, I think about one of history’s greatest unlikeliest.  The assembly of unlikely characters to declare independence from injustice and to draft an instrument so eloquent we continue to marvel at it words, and more importantly at the truth it represents.

Unlikely they ever got together, unlikely they would be successful, and unlikely the experiment they began would continue to this day. There is so much one can say about that assemblage and there are so many others who have and will explain it better,  I merely call to your attention for meditation one thought knowing the Declaration of Independence by itself could be your subject for at least a month.

The men who assembled that day were flawed, just like you and I. They couldn’t pass any major networks politically correct test today. Some were slave-owners, had affairs, had financial problems, said and did some stupid things in their childhood (imagine what CNN would say today about Washington’s clear cutting of cherry trees.) They were called “traitors, criminals, or worse” by their neighbors and countrymen. For you see one man’s injustice can be another man’s way of life. I don’t think our founding fathers came to the decisions they made by commissioning polls or doing what was popular, many of them were the elite — the 99%. I think their sense of justice came not from their minds or a desire to be richer or more comfortable. It came from their heart and soul. Something deep inside them inspired them no matter how unlikely their success or what source placed them in that moment in Philadelphia.

While you enjoy your Polish Dog, your cold beer, and colder ice cream pause for a moment to thank God for unlikely, and ask your heart what injustice stirs your soul.

About the author

Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of The United States. His novels, When Men Betray, Ginger Snaps, A Game of Inches, The Eighteenth Green, and The East End are published by Beaufort Books and are available online or at your local bookstore. When Men Betray won one of the IndieFab awards for best novel in 2014. Ginger Snaps and The Eighteenth Green won the IPPY Awards Gold Medal for best suspense/thriller. His latest, “Light of Day” will be on the bookstands soon.

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