QuoteMany cities celebrating July Fourth without a bang
What's a July Fourth celebration without fireworks? Many cities across the United States will find out Saturday.
As municipalities grope for ways to shore up budgets, expensive pyrotechnics displays are becoming the latest victims of the economic downturn.
"There's a lot of other things that I think could be cut, maybe changed, but for some reason they decided to cut the fireworks, and I think there's going to be a lot of people complaining about it," Tucson, Arizona, resident Terry Mertins told CNN affiliate KVOA-TV.
Full Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/03/independence.day.fireworks.canceled/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
Quote"The day will be the most memorable in America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival...it ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade...bonfires and illuminations (fireworks) from one end of this continent to the other, from this day forward, forevermore."
-John Adams, in a letter to his wife after the Continental Congress decided to proclaim the American colonies independent from Britain.
"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. â€" That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, â€" That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. â€" Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government."
Whole text here: http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm