{"id":54154,"date":"2015-07-05T11:57:02","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T16:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54154"},"modified":"2019-10-30T07:04:42","modified_gmt":"2019-10-30T12:04:42","slug":"amazing-american-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54154","title":{"rendered":"Amazing American Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The conclusion of Kevin Williamson&#8217;s piece <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/Americans-liberty-unearned-blessing-from-god\">on what the Fourth of July really means<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To be an American is to know a blessing that none of us has earned or merited, to have liberty not because we deserve it but because of who we are \u2014 endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights. None of us has earned that liberty, but we do have the opportunity \u2014 and it is precious \u2014 to live up to it. The Union army once had the courage and the confidence to march singing \u201cGlory! Glory! Hallelujah!\u201d Those men were facing a national crisis and physical horrors worse than anything our generation has known, or is likely to know. They endured: We have now seen 239 years of liberty and prosperity unprecedented in all of human history, a longer span of time than that which separated the Year of the Six Emperors from the fall of the Roman empire.<\/p>\n<p>Call it the historical version of a lucky break?<\/p>\n<p>No. Call it amazing grace. Glory, glory, hallelujah.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He compares liberty with the Christian notion of Grace &#8211; something we can have, but we can never earn by our own merits.<\/p>\n<p>And you should read the whole thing.<\/p>\n<p>Happy Independence Day weekend!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The conclusion of Kevin Williamson&#8217;s piece on what the Fourth of July really means: To be an American is to know a blessing that none of us has earned or merited, to have liberty not because we deserve it but because of who we are \u2014 endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights. None [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[289],"class_list":["post-54154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-kevin-williamson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54155,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54154\/revisions\/54155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}