Independance

Now that I'm getting older, I don't think of 200 years as being terribly long ago.  I can remember being a kid and dad packing us in the old station wagon to go see things like the Liberty Bell and the Capitol, and more battle grounds than you could shake a stick out.  Seeing paintings of people like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin was a bit like discovering an ancient civilization.  Wooden teeth and a wig?  Really?  Our first president had wooden teeth and wore a wig?

Part of it, I suppose, was the feeling that we were so "modern".  We had sent someone to walk around on the moon, we had rock and roll and electricity.  We were kind of like the Jetsons.  We couldn't really relate to people who didn't even have a car to put their eight track player in.  They had gruesome wars in the places where they actually lived.  They might as well have been developed by some sci-fi writer.

With time you start to observe things.  For example, you realize that the story lines for the Jetsons and the Flintstones were about the same.

But what did these revolutionaries leave us with?  Their stated problem was that they objected to taxation without representation.  There were a few kinks in their new plan.  The one that jumps out at me is that women in America couldn't vote for a little more than 100 years after they had created their union.

I don't know how represented I usually feel.  And that's coming from someone who likes the Obamas.  The country is so large and so diverse that I don't know if there even is a good system to govern it.  Fortunately, we have people who are still kicking around ideas and making modifications when needed.