Bush was naturalizing citizens in Monticello, today. AP reports:
Anti-war protesters shouted out calls for Bush’s impeachment on nine occasions during Bush’s brief remarks, and the president responded by saying he agrees that “we believe in free speech in the United States of America” [...]
The last six Fourth of July holidays have taken place amid continuing violence in Iraq. Bush’s addition of 28,000 U.S. troops last year in Iraq helped foster a measure of stability in what is now the sixth summer of the war.
The 150 or so demonstrators, from a variety of groups opposing Bush’s policies on the war in Iraq, also rallied along the path of the president’s motorcade to Monticello.
See footage below:
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The Onion offers this reinterpretation of the folksy independent Executive:
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Howard Zinn, one of humanity’s finest historians, has offered commentary on Independence Day in the past.
From 2006, “Patriotism and the Fourth of July“:
Mark Twain, having been called a “traitor” for criticizing the U.S. invasion of the Philippines, derided what he called “monarchical patriotism.” He said: “The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: ‘The King can do no wrong.’ We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had — the individual’s right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.”
And from 2007, “Put away the flags“:
One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq [...]
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history [...] We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
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Happy Independence Day, United States.
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