
1. What are your memories of the bicentennial, for all you oldsters?
In our little town, I was 12 years old and remember the town going all out. a big festival, a parade. My dad and a number of his friends all grew big fuzzy beards. Folks sewed their own colonial clothes and wore them around town. It was also Colorado’s 100th birthday, and the overlap of the two anniversaries turned into a big to-do.
2. What would the Founding Fathers think about where this nation we created has ended up today?
Jefferson and Madison, for certain, would be livid. Hamilton was a very progressive thinker as well. As an immigrant from the West Indies and of mixed race, he would be proud of the end of slavery but angry about the banking and health care systems of the present day. Jefferson was a pretty progressive libertarian as well and would be so frustrated with the hyper-regulated state. Madison would just be smacking his forehead at all the misinterpretations of the Constitution he authored.
3. What might this nation look like in another 50 years?
With the overconsumption of resources, big tech, AI, and the widespread numbing of the population’s intelligence, I think the future could be pretty bleak. The young folk need to put down the video game controllers and get involved.
4. Sure, Trump and the leaders today are terrible, but where did this all go wrong?
Reagan and New Gingrich. They are patients Zero.
5. What’s a good quote to consider this weekend during our country’s 250th anniversary?
“He [the King of Great Britain] has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.
– Thomas Jefferson, from that long thing he wrote that one time.









