Happy Independence Day, and a happy 246th birthday to the United States of America!

It’s an important holiday to me, a chance to reflect on our country’s past, its present, and to speculate on its future. This is a great country, our motherland, and it has afforded us the kind of opportunity and material wealth that a vast majority of the human population can only dream of.

Now I’ve been around the world a time or two. I’ve seen some places where the change in my pocket could have fed a family for a week. I’ve seen children entertain themselves for hours with some sticks because they didn’t have toys or TV. Make no mistake, this is a great country, and if you live in the US of A, you belong to one of the most privileged groups of people in human history.

America isn’t a perfect country, that’s for damn sure. We’ve done some terrible things, and we’ve got problems right now that are frankly embarrassing. But it’s the country I was born in and the country I once swore an oath to, and I’ll always love it. As the fictional General Sloan said in Her Name Was Abby, “We may not have always been right, might have been a little quick on the draw sometimes, but we were fighting for a greater good.”

By all means, criticize this country as you please. It certainly deserves it sometimes, and you have the freedom to do so. But you’ll have to pardon me if I instead choose to take this day to acknowledge all the good this country has done and what it stands for, what it aspires to be, and what it means to me.

Let freedom ring!