Canceling the Fourth [LINK]

In an article that demonstrates the idealistic divide existing in America today, Chris Satullo wrote yesterday in the Philadelphia Enquirer that we should cancel celebration of the Fourth of July this year because of our national sins. Satullo writes:

This year, America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement.

For we have sinned.

Satullo argued that we have failed to live up to the intentions of the founders and have "spit on [their] memory." While I do not dispute that statement nor the need for national repentance and atonement for our sins, the list that Satullo compiles shows that He and I view the current problems in America from totally different perspectives. He gives the following reasons:

The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner.

The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing.

The America they founded should never ship prisoners to foreign lands, knowing their new jailers might torture them.

From my own perspective, I would like to add a few more categories that Satullo left out.

• The America those men founded would never commit infanticide of the unborn and call it "choice."
• The America those men founded would never work to grant legal sanction (i.e., marriage) to those engaged in sexual perversion (homosexuality) and call it a "constitutional right."
  
• The America those men founded would never seize a private citizen's property and then turn it over to a real estate developer.
• The America those men founded would never confiscate (tax) the fruits of a successful man's labor to subsidize those who will not work.
  

To echo Satullo's words, "Such abuses once were committed by the arrogant crowns of Europe, spawning rebellion."

It is ironic that Satullo mentions that we need to spend the Fourth in atonement. Atonement is a uniquely Judeo-Christian concept that acknowledges our sins as being against a holy God whose wrath must be placated by a blood sacrifice lest we suffer for our disobedience of His laws.

In its Christian expression, that blood sacrifice was provided by God in sending His Son to die and to serve as the only savior through which He would deliver mankind. In contrast, the America that Satullo represents sees no holy God, no objective laws that must be obeyed, no divine wrath that must be assuaged, and, of course, no unique Savior that all must obey.

The America I see is an America that protects its citizens and their rights from government seizures and the imposition of moral perversions that are rejected by the majority of the citizens. The other America desires to protect our enemies and use the power of the courts to impose new "rights" that most Americans find offensive, if not criminal.

Chris Satullo and I view America in two totally different ways.

I like mine better.

--Submitted by B. Bryant