By now, most have already shot off fireworks and eaten their share of the 150 million hotdogs that are consumed every year on July Fourth. With Independence Day being on Thursday this year, chances are the celebration will continue throughout the weekend. Providing even more opportunities to chow down on a dog and blow off a finger.

Squeezing a Friday workday in between the Fourth of July and a Saturday almost seems un-American. I vote anytime a Federal Holiday falls on a Thursday, then Friday goes with it. Two for one if you will, makes sense to me.

I attended a Fourth of July parade and I found it remarkable at the patriotism that continues to exist even today. Two hundred forty-eight years later, we still put on a big show for telling the British that we – Americans – were not going to take it anymore. We declared independence from a tyrant nation and set into motion the birth of the United States of America.

Americans decided that they were self-sufficient and self-reliant enough to think and function as a nation without interference from the British. No more external control or influence, we got this, so buzz off.

Nobody was going to tell Americans how to live their lives, so we picked a fight with a bully and won. Just like any bully, when you punch back, they suddenly realize they’ve lost control over you, and they run.

Without question we have our problems to sort out, always have and always will. I have often told my sons that the country is more divided today than I can ever remember. But that divide from what I can tell is more political than it is social. This “straight to hate” ideology is bad medicine.

I have little doubt that most…not all…Americans will rally for fellow Americans if our sovereignty as a Nation was seriously threatened by a foreign country or enemy.

A threat of that magnitude would have to come from extraterrestrials showing up in flying saucers equipped with laser beams, because no other place on the planet would dare take us on. They may hit us with a cheap shot now and again, but other than that, there is no significant threat to the Independence of America.

Now I know many will say that we are losing our independence because we have become so dependent on foreign countries for goods and services. I don’t have the wherewithal or the facts to plunge into a deep political discussion about that, nor do I care too. But I do believe if America ever had to close itself off to the rest of the world, we’d survive. But that doesn’t sound like much fun.

Freedom and Independence are not the same thing, even though they are intertwined on July Fourth.

We are both an independent and a free nation. Independent as a country that is full of people that have the freedom to act, speak or think anyway they want.

The freedom part is where it gets tricky because freedom is about personal liberties, and nobody likes to be told how they should live their life. In America, one has the freedom to worship the god of their choice, or no god at all. One has the freedom to make decisions about their life and what is best for them, without external coercion. One has the freedom to choose any career they wish to pursue and make as much money as they want.

Also, one has the freedom to tell other people what they should and should not do, but on the other side of the coin, one has the freedom to not listen to them and make their own decisions anyway.

Freedom is being who you want to be, and letting others do the same.

I am not telling you anything you don’t already know about independence or freedom, but the Fourth of July is a great day to remind the world that nobody has it better than us.

It is our country…the USA, which is the greatest in the world…. not your country, but ours.

Is that being arrogant or cocky? Yep.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

I can do that, if not, I have the freedom to find another flag to wave.

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Todd Howey is a columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose articles appear on Fridays. Email comments to [email protected].