Happy Fourth of July Independence Day.

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress of the American people approved the Declaration of Independence from the British; thus setting the 13 colonies on the road to freedom. The Committee of Five Founding Fathers - Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston – drafted the document with Jefferson writing most of its contents.

 

As at 1776, there were about 2.5 million people in the United States. Now, the population is over 320 millions.

 

Happy July 4th, independence anniversary!

Wake Up Nigerian Parents!

Years back in Nigeria, the most populous Black nation on earth, poor, illiterate parents produced Doctors, Engineers, Scientists, Accountants, Lawyers, Architects and Professors. I refer to the kids they produced as Group 'A' Children. 

These Group 'A' Children struggled on their own from the first grade to the twelfth grade to become notable personalities. As kids, many of them trekked to school barefooted and went to farm or did some menial works such as petty trading after school hours, to survive. 

Now Group 'A' Children, who have now become parents themselves, are producing Group 'B'  Children who are pampered and helped in their homework or school assignments from nursery school through high schools to tertiary institutions.  

Group 'B' Children are chauffeur-driven to very expensive schools or are sent abroad to study. They can watch movies from morning till dawn after school. They are treated like baby kings and queens with no household chores for them to do. They are served foods on some bright, shiny dining table. When done eating, their plates are removed and washed by parents or house maids. They are given expensive cars and clothes, not forgetting huge pocket monies to be wasted on dumb stuff. And in spite of getting help from parents in doing school assignments, many of these kids cannot properly express themselves orally and in writing.  

Group 'A' parents cared for their own parents and children. Group 'B' Children however struggle most of their growing-up years to find their feet, which some rarely find, even at the age of 30. They experience great difficulty in accomplishing the smallest of tasks on their own because they are used to being pampered and helped to think and do things by their parents (the group 'A' parents). Therefore, too many of the group ‘B’ Children are useless to themselves, their parents and the society. 

As a group ‘A’ parent, where exactly do you belong in the chore of parenting? If you belong to the group of those spoiling your kids instead of properly raising them, it’s time you stopped the silly pampering. Start raising your kids in the path of knowledge, wisdom, values and virtues. Let them face the truth and the realities of life. Teach them to grow into independent adults. Teach them to fear God, respect others and develop confidence in themselves. Parents, discipline your children to become disciplined adults, useful and not useless.

America, Happy Independence Day Anniversary!!!

America, our dear God’s own country!

A nation that never claims to be perfect or Utopian in nature or scope. Very much like every other society in the world, it has its own problems. One thing is universally clear and accepted about this interesting nation though. The United States is the only nation on earth where you can be anything you wish to be, good or bad. It’s the greatest enabling environment where dreams, no matter how strange or gigantic and irrespective of the racial, religious or geographical origins of the dreamers, can be realized by dint of hard work, commitment and determination.

America, Happy Independence Day Anniversary!!! 

The Invincibility of Honey.

“No amount of hatred or contempt can prevent honey from being sweet.” – A Yoruba proverb.



 

 

"The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" - Speech by Frederick Douglass in 1852.

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory....

...Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sake and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful.

For who is there so cold, that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.

The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine.

You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct.

And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

Courtesy: usslave.blogspot