By By Chandler Myers
Saturday marks the 233rd year since our Founding Fathers declared independence from the British Empire and began the long road to bringing the United States to the forefront as a world power.
This is a road that saw good times and hard ones where every year brought on a new challenge for Americans to take on in order to survive not only as individuals, but also as a whole.
It began with the Revolutionary War against England to prove that we were fit to provide for ourselves and moving on through the War of 1812, the American Civil War and each of the World Wars.
Each of these was a battle against something bigger than ourselves.
They were wars fought so it could be known that in the end that the Stars and Stripes would rise up and never back down from a fight.
We have gone through depressions and recessions and more inflation than balloons at a five year olds birthday party.
Through the wars and bad economies, America has still come out on top and ready for the next step.
Today, we still are fighting wars overseas in the Middle East and continue to battle the economy because it is never quite right where we need it to be.
No matter what though, we must remember that we still have the greatest country of them all.
Things are bad right now and they always get worse before they get better, but the one thing to remember is that they will get better in time.
We must fight through the bad economy, not falter when it comes to supporting our troops overseas and learn from our past.
We have rights and freedoms that people from almost every other nation in the world could only dream about.
In China, a child or adult could sign on to the Internet, but they won’t be able to read this column. Their abilities online are so limited that if a teenager today heard something about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 that to them it would just be a rumor. There is no proof anywhere in books, television or online of the horrible things that have happened.
That is just one example of how different the world is away from the United States. We take for granted sometimes the rights we do have, but if you step back and look at the rest of the world it is amazing how lucky we are.
So take this Independence Day and live like an American. Have fun with your friends and family. Miss those that are fighting for us and thank the ones that fought before them because those are the people that helped us keep our rights.
Chandler Myers is sports editor of the Atmore Advance. He can be reached at 368-2123 or by e-mail at sports@atmoreadvance.com