Happy 4th of July

We've just been told by BBC Radio Four that the Statue of Liberty is to open today on the 4th July now that the new President does not share his predecessor's obsession (or words to that effect) with national security matters.
I think they can say that again.

The usual interviews with randomly-chosen people up at the top: the park ranger in charge; an Australian tourist; a squeaky teenager? who talks in questions? who thinks that just because 9/11 happened you can't keep it closed forever?
Oh, and someone who said that opening the statue is a sign that things are getting better in America. Funny that.

I just wonder how much Dame Liberty is a source of inspiration to freedom-lovers the world over in countries whose vicious bosses are getting a pass from this administration?
Are the jail cells, torture chambers (which don’t use wet face-cloths so much), rape rooms and kangaroo courts of Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Syria, Honduras and the Gaza Strip today filled with people who look to the USA as a beacon of freedom and a place of refugee from tyranny as so many others did under so many other Presidents?

No matter. Here’s a short and doubtless incomplete list of countries that have been liberated from or were kept free from brutal dictatorships by American sacrifices of blood and treasure; either directly by sole US intervention or with the help from some friends):

Afghanistan, Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Chile, Denmark, Dominica, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Grenada, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, Latvia, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the Faroe Islands, the Netherlands, the Republic of Macedonia, the United Kingdom, the Vatican City, Ukraine.

Conservatives and other cynics might point out that some of the above have leaped back into tyranny of some sort or another more or less as soon as they can, and that several of the others are far from grateful. I didn’t say that people freed by America can’t be stupid, or that their leaders can’t be jokers.

Whichever way you look at it, the Americans tried more than anyone to preserve freedom and to extend it elsewhere, and many of them are still trying.
You can measure their precious gifts in two units: dollars and gallons.

I’d like to do something for them in return.

God bless America, and thanks.

Click Picture for wish - fulfilment.