There was a bunch of guys in North America on a hot Fourth of July 233 years ago who did something crazy. They declared independence from the most powerful empire on earth and announced that the new nation they would form would have no king but would instead be run by the people by popular vote. That hadn’t occurred to anybody since 500 B.C. when the Greeks invented democracy. Theirs didn’t last all that long and in the 2,226 intervening years kings and emperors ruled the world, generally making a bloody mess of things. Government of the people, by the people and for the people was a notion that had been mentioned only in hypothetical terms, usually pretty quietly too until those crazy English colonists had the balls to say the hell with it, we’re doing it. Fuck the king! Before that, nobody said fuck the king, at least not out loud.

Of course the king sent in the Marines, who tried to rain down holy hell on the rebels and the War For Independence lasted 8 long years with the English racking up most of the victories. Except the final one, which shocked the world that these colonists had actually defeated the British Empire with a ragtag army of farmers, merchants, craftsmen and clerks led by a hemp farmer from Virginia. That farmer, a fellow named Washington, was elected President of America and before long the stunningly beautiful words in the Declaration of Independence were fleshed out into The United States Constitution, those two documents still remaining the gold standard for political manifestos and declarations of universal human rights. That said, just let me conclude with this:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA, THE COOLEST, MOST FUN, MOST FREE AND MOST BADASS PLACE ON EARTH! HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!