This is Floyd Wynne with THE VIEW FROM HERE 7/01/04

Sunday is Independence Day and the nation will celebrate with parades, fireworks and patriotic speeches.

The freedoms we exalt and salute on this day were established some 228 years ago. The Declaration of Independence spoke bravely about the freedoms and the hopes of the then young nation of the United States.

We were then embarking on a course that would lead us to war with England and eventually to the establishment of the government that we have today.

As we commemorate this day let us take a look at the world around us.

We, the United States of America, are now the only super power existing in the world.

We have armed forces all around the world...including over one hundred thirty thousand young men and women in Iraq. Over a hundred thousand still in Germany.....other forces still in South Korea, Okinawa and even in Japan proper.

Little did our forefathers imagine when the Continental Congress adopted that Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776, that that same freedom would eventually become a worldwide burden.

I say burden because we have had to protect those freedoms in many places on this globe from tyrants and dictators who oppressed their people and used their power in efforts to conquer others.

It has always been our fervent hope that all nations on this earth would understand the real nature of our freedoms and adopt them, but this has not been the case.

Even today we have expended the lives of many of our young people in an effort first to bring freedom, as we know it, to such places as the millions in Afghanistan and now in Iraq.

As a nation we twice used our forces to save freedom in Europe.

We have fought countless conflicts on behalf of that same freedom in many areas of this world.

In the ensuing years since 1776 we have become a nation of millions of people from practically all areas of the globe. In most cases they came here initially because of our freedoms, our opportunities.

Certainly our culture has changed as a result and we have become a nation of multi-races, multi religions.....yet, Americans all.

Our deepest regret on the approach of another Independence Day is that the freedoms that we enjoy have not really spread to much of the rest of this world.

Today, as a nation, we find ourselves in another war....against an enemy who has no scruples, no morals, with only one aim...to spread death and destruction wherever they can and to overwhelm and defeat the established forces of right and reason.

This conflict, more than any others we have been engaged in, is perhaps the most vital to our future as a free nation than even most Americans realize. Imagine what would happen if the forces of senseless terror were to emerge triumphant......what would happen to your freedoms and mine?

Yes....we may criticize the current course we have taken, but remember, our freedoms have survived the conflicts that have arisen across the globe in these past two centuries plus.....and it will survive as well in this current battle with terrorism.

This Sunday, as we parade, light fireworks and celebrate the very beginning of our independence.....remember, also, that freedom is a heritage that each generation must protect and defend....just as our young men and women are doing today in Iraq.

This is Floyd Wynne and that’s THE VIEW FROM HERE.