Happy Birthday, America! According to your birth certificate (The Declaration of Independence) on this Fourth of July you are 227 years old. Congratulations! You don’t look a day over 210.

Thanks be to our founding fathers for their courage, wisdom and statesmanship. Thank you, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock. And to all of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, again we say “thanks”.

It’s amazing what these men accomplished in a day when there was no indoor plumbing or electricity. (Well, I guess Benjamin Franklin might argue with me regarding electricity.) But imagine how different it would have been if these men had lived in modern times.

For instance, Benjamin Franklin would have been all over the Internet. Rather than printing, he would have published his own web site: www.BenFromPenn.com. And when it came to email, you know that he would have been a “spammer”, collecting and forwarding every little clever email message. Where do you think that he got all of those wise sayings for “Poor Richard’s Almanac?”

And what about other heroes of that day? Instead of riding a horse to alert that “The British are coming!” Paul Revere would be driving a Hummer and shouting “They’re He-ere!”

It would definitely be different, but our nation’s founding fathers could handle it. They were men of such good character that they would be successful leaders in any day and age. But I’m afraid that I can’t say the same thing with regards to the politicians of today.

Just think-- what if it were the other way around? What if today, we were just now going through the Revolutionary War? How would the politicians of today fare, if saddled with that responsibility?

Would Ted Kennedy still be hung-over from the Boston Tea Party? What did he have in his tea, anyway? Is a Byrd in the hand of the Senate worth two Bushes in the Whitehouse?

And what about those soldiers of old who were ready at a moments notice to take on the enemy in combat? Those brave “minutemen” would be replaced with “one minute managers” who would wimpishly send someone else to go fight for them.

When the founding fathers drafted the Declaration of Independence, they met together for several weeks in Philadelphia, “the city of brotherly love.” Today’s politicians would have rendezvoused for a weekend in Las Vegas, “Sin City.” They would have voted themselves a pay raise and then charged the whole trip to the taxpayers and gone home.

“The Spirit of ‘76” would eight-six the fife and drums and replace them with an electric guitar and bongos. Worst of all, our national security would suffer dramatically as our attention would be distracted from the “Red Coats” by the "blue dress.”

Lucky for us, the American Revolution has already been fought and won a long time ago. If it had been fought today, the outcome might have been different and we would all find ourselves speaking English right now. (Wait a minute… Doh!) Anyway…

Let me leave you with one interesting bit of trivia about the father of our nation, George Washington. Contrary to popular belief, George Washington did NOT wear a wig, even though wigs were fashionable at the time. However, he did powder his hair, as was the custom-- and he wore it long and he tied in a pony tail, or “queue”, in the back. I wonder if the FATHER of the father of our nation ever fussed at George about his hair?

© Copyright 2003 Glen Davis