Salute to the United States of America on our Independence Day!

What does independence means to you?  I think it means a lot of different things to different people.

Independence to say, do, love, be openly for or against something, and so many other things.

For me being able to say, think and do whatever it is I want to, is very meaningful.  I was born and raised for most of my early years under a dictatorship.  We were scared to even talk about worldwide events in fear of being taken away and disappearing in the middle of the night.  Being a female also was a stroke against you.  That makes me very appreciative of living as a citizen of a country that promotes and embraces freedoms.  I also know that with such freedoms, come much responsibilities.  It is all part of a beautiful equation.

Our forefathers were the bravest of the brave when they exposed themselves, their  families and friends to being persecuted and put to death for wanting to be independent from a system they felt was oppressive.  Too much taxation.  That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for them.  And I am so ever thankful to them and their struggles, so today we, Americans, can enjoy our freedoms.

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident:  That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I salute all and each American citizen on this our Independence Day.  God bless the United States of America.

Your Happy Contessa

The paragraphs in quotation marks are from a Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress Assembled, July 4, 1776.