I was hoping that some one would talk to these issues, but since no one has, I will. If you're not up for a brief history of the American Revolution part 1, please delete!!! First, please know that much of that essay on the signers is exageration, based in fact, perhaps, but as my Dad would say, "Exaggeration for Effect!" For example, Nelson really did tell Washington to target his house...you can see where it stood in Yorktown today, and we've a college named for him here on the Virginia peninsula. The signers of this document put themselves and all they had at risk...by signing, they declared themselves traitors to the King, and immediately guilty of sediton! A hundred years or so before, this had cost our Bruce ancestor his freedom, home, and country, as he was put in chains, and sent to the Colonies. We're grateful that he didn't just give up when he arrived, but like so many of the people who came here, either voluntarily or otherwise, began to make a whole new nation. At first they prized their status as British citizens, but after the French and Indian War, things began to fall apart. Then, as now, wars were fought over economic factors perhaps even more than lofty ideals. The British Navy was shutting down the smuggling trade, which had brought cheap English goods into the Colonies...they were taxing the colonists for things you and I wouldn't stand still for...paper, thread, and other wool products, glass for their windows, tea, and finally the infamous "stamps"...not just postage but the stamps that went on deeds, wills, and the like. Add to that that the government had placed high import tax on all Colonial goods going into England...not a good thing for the Colonial tobacco growers. The war actually began in 1775, with the famous Bunker-Breed Hill incident. So the men who were at the second Continental Congress had been at war for a year with Britian...not to separate, but to force the King to give them the rights due to them as British citizens...not slaves (That's what all that Freedom stuff was all about). In 1776, the face of the war changed and a new nation was proposed. The cost for everyone would be enormous. It would be a country at war until 1781, and then the Constitution wouldn't be completely ratified for 7 years after that...can you imagine the chaos...soldiers, paid in usless continental script...one of my husband's ancestors is still owed for 400 pounds of beef. If you were a Loyalist, chances are that you would lose everything. And good people were loyalists...they'd made a committment to the King, and would abide by it, even if it cost them terribly. Most fled to England or Canada during or after the war. Families were split...in my family, half stayed in NY, and half fled to Canada (we're friends now...but this was a terrible split that would affect families though the War of 1812, [now that's another story!!]) Maybe it's this hard birth that made us who we are. Maybe it's because everyone who came here did so knowing that it would be a new start...for everyone, man and woman. Must create a strain of that patriot in us all. And I think that the outcome, a Nation with the same government for over 200 years...a model many have used in creating their own governments, is pretty amazing. It's had some spectacular successes and enormous failures...but we do it in public, with all the people of the nation and now the world looking on. As for WWII, I think that many people in the US, and Canada (the other Americans!!) and I'd bet, Australia, thought that the oceans that surrounded us would protect us. And it was hard at first to separate this war from the thousand years of war that Europeans engaged in. We didn't want a repeat of WWI...all that loss and the result is the same...more European war. We sent money and supplies. A movement of isolationism isn't hard to understand. And neither is our response to someone having the "Gall" to take us on. (We saw that again in Vietnam...one of those enormous failures I spoke to earlier.) And as to Africa...does 1942 Operation Torch and that uniquely American general, General George Patton, mean anything? Sorry, Rowland, that you don't much care for us...you're not required to. But, we are all connected by our Bruce lineage, and should try to be patient with each other, as "cousins" of an evershrinking world. I'm real proud to be an American, will fly our flag on the Fourth, as I do on most days, and I will use that day to think about the cost that others have paid, so that I can fly that flag...the signers of that Declartation, the men and women who fought that war, the War of 1812, and every other war-including Great Britian and her allies who defeated Hitler and his. And, British cousin, Bruce, I, too, will go to see "The Patriot"...because it's my favorite time of US History. It may be Hollywood, but I can deal with "exaggeration for effect" to get a sense of what it must have been like to make those choices and to live that time. In the spirit of the Fourth, that men and women are created to make their own choices, I wish all a Happy Fourth of July!!!!