If you’re familiar with this modest venue of reality combined with truth and fun, you know I take lots of liberties with the English language. In fact, every one of my English teachers – probably all of whom are now deceased – are rolling over in their graves as I type. Please file those liberties under ‘Freedom of Speech.’
Along the way I also find myself struggling for appropriate words to make my point. Since I’m old enough to remember when the Dead Sea was just sick, it’s hard for me to believe there aren’t words to accurately describe my thoughts. If I can’t recall or find an appropriate word, I simply make one up because my time is too short to be wading through blah blah, blah, nebulous information.
So, I looked up “number of words in the English language.”
It seems as though throughout this lengthy list of referenced sites resides an equally lengthy list of numbers. Ranging from between 171,476 to 470,000, those numbers are not even close to one another, but several websites note that the numbers change daily as new words are added. It’s apparent these articles were written by lawyers who like to avoid finite information.
In any case, the reason for all this tiring research is for a really big event. The event of which I mention is America’s Semiquincentennial Celebration. For all those readers using the metric system, that denotes the 250th anniversary. (I believe someone made that word up just as I would have.)
The United States Semiquincentennial Commission and the White House Task Force on Celebrating America's 250th Birthday published this word in its announcement of this historic event recognizing the longevity of America’s experiment of making a new country out of whole cloth.
To simplify this exercise of new land colonizers breaking away from Mother England in the 1770’s, then-King George III demanded a tax increase on British tea sent to America. Although these settlers were loyal to the King, they were doing all the heavy lifting, so to speak, and being punished for it.
Mayhem involving British-taxed tea being thrown into Boston Harbor, and the games began.
In any case, British soldiers were dispatched to America in order to regain control of, and punish, this insolence. Kind of like watching the movie Titanic, we all know how this saga ends.
A fledgling country was born anew uniting the already established thirteen colonies, also known as The United States.
African, European, Asian, and other conglomerations of nations at that time were being ruled by monarchs. They largely took over land masses through colonization and never left. Often exploiting natural resources along with strategic geographical advantages, these other nations eventually collapsed under their own mismanagement or civil unrest generated by natives.
But the United States was different. It created a new door to government, one that took in consideration of all its citizenry – of the people, by the people, and for the people. This “We the People” concept had never been tried before.
How could it ever work, much less succeed?
After 250-years of rules begun with the Bill of Rights, the United States has become an example of what can be achieved by incorporating its citizenry in the decision-making process of keeping our widely varying now 50-states cohesive.
Through free and fair elections, legal citizens are given the right to cast ballots for leaders who are elected, along with issues that affect its taxpayers. Via voting and representation in both the Congress and Senate, constituents are able voice their opinions as to how their government and representatives deal with day-to-day operations.
With those operations comes the duty to pay for all considerations managed by the government to fairly keep Americans safe. From police and fire protection, the military, infrastructure, health, as well as countless other categories affecting the entire nation, the preparedness and salaries of those critical civil servants is beyond important.
Maintaining equipment, training supplies, outreach, plus dealing with obsolescence, gets very, very expensive very quickly.
But it’s keeping the masses united that is key to longevity, camaraderie, peace, and integrity. All of which are critical unless or until envious outside forces feel the need to cripple our great experiment.
Other nations tried and failed at creating sovereign country built by a smattering of colonists driven to the edge by a king 250-years ago. King George III thought ruling with an iron fist was the definitive answer to keeping his subjects under his control. He was wrong.
There’s an old saying: The beatings will continue until the morale improves.
Nothing could be further from the truth. When everyone has a seat at the table, everyone has a stake in the game. And everyone needs to band and work together lest the entire system collapses, ending without any winners.
After 250 years of working at this noble experiment – and thus far succeeding – we all should be very proud. We stand alone as the only country in the world to have lasted this long giving freedom, security, and future hopes to over 350,000,000 citizens. Let’s not stop now.
It’s too bad we still had to have somebody conjure up the word semiquincentennial. I’m pretty sure it’s not a real word.
