I am very patriotic. I was a child during World War II, when Americans fought for freedom and democracy and to liberate the world from tyranny.
I want America to be the America I thought it would be in my childhood.
I want it to be a place with “liberty and justice for all.”
I want it to be a country where no one is homeless.
I want it to be a country where no one goes hungry, where everyone who wants to work can find a job that pays a living wage.
I want it to be a country where no one who is ill cannot afford medical care.
I want it to be a country where people get enough education to realize their hopes and dreams, without going deep into debt.
I want it to be a country where schools cultivate creativity and the joy of learning.
I want it to be a country where educators are treated with the same respect as other professionals.
I want it be to a country where neighbors help one another and care for one another.
I want it to be the country of the American Dream, a country where every child can grow up loved and live in dignity.
That’s what the Fourth of July means to me.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Amen.
LikeLike
Happy July 4th! I want the same things Diane. My we continue to work to bring about our dreams of a better future.
LikeLike
And I offer a history lesson from Alice Walker’s blog that helps us put into perspective what is happening with the corporate takeover of our public schools. It is an article that argues against a Clinton presidency but I am not promoting nor advocating that position. The history lesson of creeping corporate takeover and budding fascism is very enlightening:
“Reform is neither difficult nor unprecedented. Our history displays a number of means of subordinating corporate interests to the welfare of the American people. More than a century ago—in the “Gilded Age”—the nation faced a similar crisis and dealt with it successfully. And a century before that, effective mechanisms were in place to restrain corporate dominion, even though the threat of it was already visible.
This is what Thomas Jefferson said about the issue:
“I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
Note Jefferson’s concern was merely prospective, wary of potential. Corporate enterprise was not yet dominant, only pushing to be. At the time, corporations were very strongly circumscribed, to assure their subservience to public well-being. Perhaps Jefferson feared they would escape the control mechanisms early corporations faced:
they were chartered for a limited period of time, typically twenty years
they were chartered for a single specific purpose, say to construct a toll road
the charter could be revoked if the corporation’s behavior violated public interests
stockholders, directors, and officers of the corporation were personally responsible for the corporation’s obligations or transgressions
a corporation could not buy or otherwise merge with another corporation
Mr. Jefferson’s fears were realized.
As the 1800′s progressed corporations in America—particularly the great railroads—fought vigorously and successfully to have these constraints relaxed, and all of them were. The corporate structure escaped any meaningful public control.
Eventually corporations could grow without limit by absorbing others; they could live in perpetuity; they could undertake multiple tasks and change them at will. Personal liability was limited to a pittance, and charter revocation virtually disappeared. Then, in 1866, corporations as artificial persons became legal persons: the Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad extended the rights of U.S. citizenship to corporate entities. They were granted equal protection under the law, their rights protected by the U.S. Constitution. (The grant of legal personhood, Thom Hartmann discovered, was technically illegal, but it has endured. See his book, Unequal Protection.)
By the end of the century, unrestrained corporate enterprise rampaged through the economy—exploiting labor, polluting the environment, concentrating wealth—and dominated the political system. Corporations had learned the art of disguised bribery: financing political campaigns to ensure the passage (or repeal) of legislation in their interests. It was a vivid preview of the conditions we face today.
But their appalling behavior eventually became too egregious to sustain even with graft. A great wave of reformist and anti-trust legislation was enacted. Finally in 1906 Theodore Roosevelt submitted to Congress the Corporate Donations Abolition Act, prohibiting the practice. He signed it into law on January 26, 1907, and that was the end of corporate money flowing to elected officials.
Theodore Roosevelt undertook a revolution, to reclaim American democracy. Perhaps we need a Roosevelt surrogate today.
The Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1910 superseded and greatly strengthened the abolition law. It specified a further and brilliant means of assuring the independence of elected officials: it put stringent limits on campaign expenditures. If you can’t spend much, there is no need to solicit much, even from individual donors.
History displays, then, determined efforts to foreclose corporate dominance. But history also shows a failure of political resolve in the late 20th century, because American corporations escaped public oversight and control once more. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 repealed the Federal Corrupt Practices Act and legalized political action committees, or PACs. A convoluted trickle of corporate campaign contributions flowed once more. Then two Supreme Court cases opened the floodgates. First Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 and then Citizens United v. FEC in 2010 gave birth to the Super PAC: contributing money, the Supreme Court decided, is a form of free speech.
No longer prohibited but encouraged to seek political dominance, corporations have lots of money with which to speak freely. There are laws they want passed, and others they want repealed, like the Glass-Steagall Act. That law was a firewall protecting the public interest from high-flying finance, but eleven Wall Street banks hated it. Those eleven banks speak with loud voices, having contributed $83,720,000 over the years to the Clintons’ presidential and senatorial campaigns.
Glass-Steagall was repealed during Bill Clinton’s Administration. Doing so was a direct cause of the subprime-mortgage crisis and the economic collapse of 2008. The banks were bailed out with taxpayers’ money and continue to prosper. The American people continue to suffer.
This is now the template. Corporate interests thrive—exploiting labor, polluting the environment, concentrating wealth, and dominating the political system. But the interests of the nation at large languish, and this will not change until governance is returned to democratic processes. Overturning Citizens United and reinstating The Federal Corrupt Practices Act would be an excellent beginning. Overturning Santa Clara County, to rescind corporate personhood, would be an epochal finale.”
http://alicewalkersgarden.com/2016/06/the-chaos-of-a-hillary-clinton-presidency/
LikeLike
Thanks for the history lesson; I knew some, but not all of this. It is unfortunate that we did not learn from our history. We are now in a new Gilded Age with huge income disparity, robber barons and burgeoning fascism. We do need a Roosevelt or a Sanders!
LikeLike
It is important that we remain hopeful and vigilant if we want our democracy to be better. As I have said before, public education is a cornerstone of democracy in action, and it has served our nation well. We must continue to protect and improve it. We must hold our policymakers accountable for bad decisions, and the only way to get a legitimate response from them is to get the money out of politics. Money and power corrupt. Above all we must vote. If more Americans voted, we would have the power to make necessary changes.
LikeLike
Perfect!
LikeLike
Same generation, similar wants for the nation and for public education. You have articulated the platform that every worthy candidate for public office should have.
LikeLike
Bernie is closer to everything you want than Hillary. Too bad we’re stuck in the rut of a twisted system that thwarts your golden aspirations.
LikeLike
Thank you, Diane! Your patriotism leads the way!
LikeLike
I wonder how the native peoples feel about July 4th. The creation of one nation was the end of the nations of the original inhabitants who had lived here for thousands of years. They lost their land, their language, their culture and customs. I love this country, it’s been very good to me but I do have to recognize that it’s also built on theft and slavery.
LikeLike
Well said. We say we believe in all men are created equal and there is so very much that our forefathers stated in which is the U. S. at its best. Tragically, we have not in the past nor now in the present lived up to those ideals for which people have died to allow us to seek those ideals. We forget them at our peril. Today, the 4th should make us reflect on those superlative ideals for which the rest of the world has honored us so very much.
LikeLike
While this isn’t Native Americans, an excellent document from Frederick Douglass discusses “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Powerful stuff: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/
LikeLike
Me too Of course the 40s reality was not what you and I quite imagined.
Sent from my iPhone
>
LikeLike
Deb,
I speak not of what was but what we believed and hoped for
LikeLike
Me, too , Diane. Me, too. Put it up at oped
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/What-the-Fourth-of-July-Me-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Creativity_Democracy_Diane-Ravitch_Education-160704-775.html#comment605167
LikeLike
Thank you Threatened Out West for posting such a precious and meaningful link:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/
From that link, certain idea is worth to repeat
[start paragraph]
They loved their country (=Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude) better than their own private interests;
and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country.
In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.
[end paragraph]
Liberty for all or democracy for all Americans is much needed in educational profession.If all children = young learners are under stress of over-testing scheme, future American citizens will become submissive and fearful citizens.
However, we must remind each other that democracy is built up and sustained by the price of human blood and by the loss of sight of all other interests.
[start paragraph]
Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves.
Yet his monument is built up by the price of human blood, and the traders in the bodies and souls of men shout — “We have Washington to our father.” — Alas! that it should be so; yet so it is.
The evil that men do, lives after them, The good is oft-interred with their bones.
[end paragraph]
LikeLike
It’s my pleasure to post the link. I think it’s a document that’s not used enough, frankly.
LikeLike
The sun sets over the US oligarchy, this evening, July 4, 2016.
LikeLike
Thanks Dear One…You are what I have always wanted to be…BRR
Billy R. Reagan
(713) 795-9696
(832) 215-8877 cell
LikeLike