Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Mark Steyn has a column up concerning the loss of American spirit in the present generation.  He’s onto something.

Firecrackers and bottle rockets have been illegal in Minnesota since I was a kid so my Dad had to drive to Wisconsin or South Dakota to get them.  My mother was stern with my brother and me: I don’t care what the song says, you can NOT start shooting fireworks at the dawn’s early light, you must wait until 8:00 a.m. because the neighbors are sleeping.  The entire rest of the day was an agonizing exercise in rationing – can’t shoot them off all at once, got to make them last.  A boy who ran out of firecrackers or bottle rockets before dark might die of embarrassment.

This year, I was up at dawn enjoying coffee in the peaceful stillness of my back yard.  Hmmm, no firecrackers?  Weird.  My wife dragged me to a craft sale in Roseville, quiet as church.  Did the entire metro go to the lake?  Where are the fireworks?  I didn’t hear my first explosion until nearly noon.  Seriously, there’s more gunfire in Frogtown on any ordinary Saturday than fireworks I heard on the 4th of July.

This nation is going down the tubes.  When ordinary citizens can’t be bothered to flout petty regulations, we might just as well call England and say “You were right, we are too stupid to be independent, sign us up for colony status.”  If I must be a serf to a ruler by fiat served by uncaring bureaucrats in a far-off city, I’d rather it be London than Washington, D.C.

Joe Doakes

Well, there was plenty of rebellion in my corner of Saint Paul on Saturday evening…