By Debbie Schlussel

I could say what I essentially say on this site on the Fourth of July every year: that Independence Day is much more than about our freedom to eat hot dogs today rather than hamburgers, that it’s more than the freedom of the lesser-palated to choose ketchup for your hot dog (MUSTARD only!). I could say, as I usually do, that I’m so glad and fortunate to be born an American and to live in freedom in this great country that our Founding Fathers helped give us 237 years ago. And on and on. But, while I celebrate the founding of the United States of America, today, with the rest of my American friends and readers, I’m just not so sure how independent we are anymore and worried about how much longer it will last. Because as many of our troops remain overseas and on duty today protecting alleged American interests, I see little protecting going on here on U.S. soil. But I do see a lot of going to the mall. Yay, Freedom! I repost the National Anthem and “G-d Bless America” renditions below like I’ve done in other years because sometimes I feel like that’s all we have left.

Independence Day Fireworks @ Mount Rushmore. 2008

MUST WATCH GREAT, TOUCHING National Anthem Video Sung by Jewish Choir, “Kol Ish” . . .

On Sunday, around noon, I, too, was at the mall, a strip mall in Farmington Hills, Michigan, at the border of West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. These are both suburbs of Detroit that, for the last couple of decades, became heavily Jewish and Chaldean (Iraqi Christian) with a good population of other (mostly White) Christians. It is at least a 20 minute drive away from the Muslim enclaves of Dearbornistan and Dearbornistan Heights and Hamtramckstan (and now Canton and so on). But, now, they are everywhere, because we did nothing to stop the virus. I was at the strip mall for about 45 minutes, and during that time, I saw about 14 families, at least seven of them visibly Muslim (with the woman wearing not just a hijab, but a long robe). Yes, half.

They are invading, expanding, spreading all over the place like a virus, like a metastasizing cancer. And they don’t believe in our freedoms, as we well know. I didn’t need to see these idiotic slave women Muslimas in their garb of oppression to get that. I’ve been writing about it for decades. And don’t you dare think the Muslim protesters in Egypt’s Tahrir Square who are happy with Mohammed Morsi’s ouster are any great democrats either. They aren’t. They and others around the world would gladly trade our lives, our rights, our freedom for their ability to lay down the law of their stultifying religion on you and me. And they are here multiplying and spreading all over and imposing their backward, reactionary ways on you and me.

So, while I celebrate our freedom today and the men and women who allegedly are protecting it over there, I wonder how many more generations we will have it here. Yes, we were the greatest country on earth. But in recent years, the decline from that precipice has snowballed. With gay marriage, open gays in the military, women in combat, socialized national healthcare, illegal alien amnesty, the Kardashians and Teen Moms as the pinnacle of American culture, generations of babymamas and babydaddies, and other destruction from within, America is fast disintegrating. And it’s beyond embarrassing. Even worse is the resignation to it all, even on the right, with the celebration and idol-worship of the Palin trash (recent stars of “Wife Swap”) and draft-dodging scumbag, Ted Nugent–whose kid to babymama count is now up to nine kids he admits he fathered with seven women.

This morning, I spoke with a friend who is a frequent reader and commenter on this site. He told me he no longer celebrates Independence Day and America as we know it because he says it is no longer that country, so it’s just another day for him. I wouldn’t go that far. But he has a point. If the best we have to celebrate today is the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest (and I admit I like watching that), then maybe America is over. I’m not sure we’re there yet. But I do think we’re well on our way. And that saddens me. I don’t feel today like I have on other Independence Days.

On the other hand, today, unlike on other Fourths of July, I’ve had more people–at the gym, while doing errands, at Starbucks, and even at my apartment complex, wishing me a “Happy Fourth of July.” So maybe there is hope. Maybe people will get off their asses from watching “The Voice” and “Game of Thrones” and wake up. Or maybe I’m just too optimistic in my tiny sliver of optimism.

Will we have another 237 years of America after this? We are still a young nation, and yet, the country has rotted in youth. Will it survive for another few centuries? We won’t be around to see it. I hope it will survive. I lament that it may not. Not the way we know it. Not even close.

So, today, for me, is bittersweet. I’m so lucky (as are you, my American readers) that we live in this greatest country on earth in relatively good times. But we are unlucky to be unwilling observers of what is probably the midst of a permanent decline.

America’s future is unmarried, broken families. More women with multiple kids by different men who are not in those kids’ lives by their choice or the woman’s choice. Its future is more illegal aliens changing the balance. More illegal and legal Muslim immigration. More redefinitions of institutions like marriage and the U.S. Armed Forces. More women in power in government in all sectors of government and the private sector. And more male decline and slackerhood, as men give up and are trained to seek positions in this world as slackers and sperm donor Mr. Moms. More Obamas and Hillarys ruling the roost. And more crooked schmucks like Marco Rubio and Chris Chrispiecreme in the Republican Party, ensuring the future of the Democratic Party as the ruling party for America. There may be a new, more liberal party that gives the Dems competition. But the Republicans will die out because they give a cubic zirconium version of the Democrat Party. And with that, you can look for more social breakdown, more crime, less jobs and prosperity, and more decline in America.

Good luck with that.

Happy Birthday, America. I hope you last at least another 237 years, but I have my strong doubts about that. I’m just glad I won’t be here to see if they are realized.

I hope I’m wrong. But the trends forecast a trajectory in the direction that I am right.

Voices of Glory sing “G-d Bless America” . . .

Remember, below is what today is all about–these men were real men, sadly unequaled by far too many Americans today. Great men made America great, not the other way around. Now, we have mediocre and worse men, women, and transsexuals who make America mediocre and worse.

The Declaration of Independence

Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

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.

John Trumbull’s Famous Painting of the Great Men Who Made America Great

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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to 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 shown 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. –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. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

These men disagreed on many things before they signed this and after. They had many long debates and many wanted to remain a province of the British and their king. That was the easy way out–to have a government encroaching on their lives that also paid for everything, every bit of bad behavior. But they finally realized that independence was the only way. Signing and declaring independence from Britain was not an easy thing. It was a daunting thing, especially in that time in a relatively new land with many unknowns and a lot of unconquered territory to the West. Yet, they showed the courage, the cojones–to do so. Their leadership and bravery, with the help of G-d, is the reason why our country exists and is still here today, well more than two centuries later. Let’s never forget their sacrifices and protect our freedom tirelessly. And let’s try to emulate them a little more in a day and age when “sacrifice” is watching “The Walking Dead” on a DVR instead of when it airs. I wonder, today, if we would have the guts–the balls–to make this kind of sacrifice, and I doubt it.

There are NO men or women in America’s leadership or elected office in America today who are anything like these men. None. Not even close. And that is why America’s future is so precarious.

Then, we had great men. Today, we have selfish, fame-seeking politicians on all sides of the aisle (see Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Halal ChrispieCreme, Gov. of New Jerseystan). Then, statesmen were the reason the United States declared independence and became a nation. Today, our Armed Forces–our brave soldiers serving to protect us–are the reason our nation is still independent and still here at all. And that is changing, too, with Obama’s shrinking of our armed forces and their weaponry and socially destroying them from within with his liberal policies on gays and women. Think of our soldiers, today while we celebrate our independence, as they remain on guard at this moment for you and me and our freedom and liberty (something that may not necessarily be the case in the future, the way things are going).

Happy Birthday, America. I hope, G-d-willing, better days are ahead for us and not behind us. America, the Best Damn Country on Earth. But fast becoming the best damn country that once was. Sigh.

America was good while it lasted.

* I do not write out the full name of G-d, as this is against the Jewish religion and is considered using the name in vain.