Today's News Blog comes from Boston, where I'm about to board the train to Maine. I will blog about that on Tuesday, as the train to Maine has some similarities to the high speed train debate in Wisconsin.

NEWS BLOG (WSAU) We don't think of Independence Day as a religious holiday. We should.

Our Declaration of Independence was very much a religious document. It contained the radical idea that man's rights came from God. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that man is endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights..." The thinking of the day was that your rights were whatever your king said they were. The wealthiest, most comfortable, most influential colonists would sign their names to that idea caused others to take notice.

After the signing there was considerable debate over what the fight for freedom would look like. Hostilities had already started in Massachusetts. Would other states join in? Would the fight for freedom be one colony at a time? Would militias from Georgia and Virginia send their sons to die in New England? Would they hold back and hope the fight in there state would be easier depending on redcoat casualties up north?

That was the debate in Virginia when Patrick Henry spoke at St. John's Church in Richmond. You know his closing line, "Give me Liberty or give me death!" But he makes an impassioned plea that God holds the fate of nations in His hands, and that would be a decisive advantage over tyranny. (Read Patrick Henry's speech here:http://tinyurl.com/39ne26 )

He wrote: "Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature has placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave."

Happy Independence Day.

Chris Conley
Operations Manager, Midwest Communications-Wausau
7.4.10