AM Show HR 1 - Oh, Happy Day, It's Our Annual July 4th Special!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let me start by praising those of you who didn't
get the day off today, whether you be a firefighter
or police officer, small business owner, provider of services, provider
of whatever it is that you contribute to keep things moving.

(00:24):
Maybe you would really really like to be off today,
but you can't afford to. Times are tough, or maybe
someone else needs you. Whether you are getting paid for
delivering your service today, or you do it for a
loved one or a friend, whoever, that is a pat
on the back to you. Sometimes it's just nice to

(00:46):
know that you're appreciated, or even if not appreciated, acknowledged,
so we acknowledge you on your way to work. For
many of you, you are today getting up and getting
ready to host the family who's coming over, maybe a
company picnic, maybe a church related event, whatever it is

(01:09):
that you are doing on this day, or maybe just
maybe you're taking a day to yourself, and that is
perfectly fine as well. For a lot of our folks.
That is like my wife outside gardening, or maybe that's
cleaning out the garage, one of my favorite things to
do in the world, or maybe that's gassing up the

(01:31):
vehicles and washing them off, cleaning the House, organizing, doing
the finances, or whatever it is that you're doing on
your July fourth. We're honored to be with you. Might
I recommend as an exercise that you will find a

(01:51):
little awkward at first, but once you dive in and
commit to it, very rewarding. You can find it online
the Declaration of Independence. The vote was actually on July second,
but the document wasn't finished until July fourth. It really

(02:12):
is a beautiful statement of we're not continuing down this line.
We will no longer be subjected to the evils you've
put us under. We were born under your reign as
the king, and we will no longer be your subjects.

(02:37):
It literally inspired a world and has for two hundred
and fifty years. That's not just puffery. That's not just
pretty talk. That's not just patriotism and Americana.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
That is real.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
That is real, That is glorious. That is our birthright.
That happened. We had nothing to do with it. We
were just key enough to be born into it. Take
a moment read that document. You'll be impressed.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Michael Berry's show, This great Country America is unique in
that it offers anyone and everyone the opportunity to succeed.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
You can come from nothing. And if you study and
you work hard, and you sacrifice, and you delay gratification,
you make good decisions, you can be successful. That is
the American dream. Opportunity. It's not guaranteed, it's not assured,
the opportunity to fail and then try again. That's why

(03:41):
people from all over the world make their way to
this country. That's why Ronald Reagan called America the shining
City upon a hill. What a beautiful line. One thing
that we used to take for granted was that Hollywood
loved America as much as we did. Ronald Reagan surely did.
One of my favorite pieces of audio is John Wayne
talking about American opportunity. I love the stars of film

(04:04):
and television singing God bless America. At the end, boy,
I wish we could have that again.

Speaker 4 (04:10):
American opportunity has no limits, has been known to knock
more than once. How about you, very young people who
see a tough life ahead. Well, when Lee surrendered to
Grant at Appomattox, Booker T. Washington was a nine year
old slave. Yet by the time he was twenty eight,
he became president of Tuskegee Institute, and at eight months

(04:34):
Neil Armstrong took his first small baby step toward mankind
and fell flat on his face. At six years old,
Nicky Mannel was settling for a base on ball. At
seven Wilt Chamberlain nailed to practice soop Overy's garage without
a ladder, And at eight Charles Lindberg was flying a kite,

(04:55):
wondering how it feel to be up that high. At nine,
bird back erect I was thinking the piano lessons that
never end. How many of you are pushing fifty in
complaining that the country.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Has gone to hell?

Speaker 4 (05:10):
Christmas Addicts was in his forties when he died on
State Street in Boston, fighting for the freedom that we share.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
And John F.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
Kennedy was forty four when he asked not what his
country could do for him, but what he could do
for his country. And how many of you over sixty
five are just settling down, not arrest after a busy life. Well,
a fellow by the name of Eisenhower, who had already
lived one lifetime as a soldier, was re elected to

(05:41):
the presidency when he was sixty seven years young. Well,
by now I've made my point or I never will.
Oh there's one other thing. Every man and woman or
child I've ever known, met, seen, or heard of wants
one thing more than anything else in the world. Not
one thing is tomorrow. Tomorrow. That's the only thing any

(06:05):
of us have going for us. And I believe this.
If tomorrow, all of us, every single one of us,
gets out of bed and says, this is my country
and I'm going to do good for it, We'll make
the greatest step forward since a pilgrim's foot found Plymouth Rock.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (06:23):
Remember, this is my country and I'm going to do
good for it. Just might work. We'll never know unless
we give it a fair try. Oh yeah, and there's
one other thing I'll say tomorrow, because I said every
day of my life. God bless America.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
You're listening to the Michael Berry Shows a.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Special treat for me. On this July fourth, we have
stage actor Max MacLean reading one of the greatest documents
ever written, the Declaration of Independence. I know you've read it,
I know you've heard it, but listen to it with
fresh ears anew.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
In Congress July fourth, seventeen seventy six, 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

(07:22):
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,

(07:45):
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 of these ends,
it is the right of the people to alter or
to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its

(08:07):
foundation on such principles, in organizing its powers in such
forms as to them shall seem most likely to affect
their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that government's
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes,
and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more
disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right

(08:29):
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpationients, 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 patients sufferance

(08:51):
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 usurpationients, 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.

(09:14):
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

(09:36):
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 that places unusual, uncomfortable, and
distant from the depository of their public records, for the
sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

(09:58):
He has dissolved represented houses repeatedly for opposing with manly
firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He
has refused, for a long time, after such desolutions, 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

(10:18):
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 of naturalization of foreigners,
refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and
raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has
obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to

(10:40):
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 officers, and sent hither swarms
of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He is kept among us in times of peace standing

(11:00):
armies without the consent of our legislatures. He has effected
to render the military independent of and superior to, the
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

(11:21):
protecting them by a 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 seize to be tried, for pretended offenses,

(11:43):
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 into these colonies.
For taking away our charters, abolishing ours the most valuable laws,
in altering fundamentally the forms of our governments, For suspending

(12:05):
our own legislators, 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, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of
our people. He is at this time transporting large armies

(12:26):
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

(12:50):
friends and brethren, or to for themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored
to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless
Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished
destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage

(13:12):
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

(13:32):
we been wanting an 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

(13:56):
our connections and correspondence, they too have been death 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.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Friends.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
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

(14:36):
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

(14:58):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
You're listening to the Michael Berry's Show.