{"id":54201,"date":"2015-07-08T06:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54201"},"modified":"2015-07-07T06:56:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T11:56:15","slug":"with-a-rebel-yell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54201","title":{"rendered":"With A Rebel Yell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mark Steyn has a column up concerning\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.steynonline.com\/7040\/insufficiently-independent-to-hold\" target=\"_blank\">the loss of American spirit<\/a> in the present generation.\u00a0 He&#8217;s onto something.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 My mother was stern with my brother and me: I don&#8217;t care what the song says, you can NOT start shooting fireworks at the dawn&#8217;s early light, you must wait until <span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_243067070\"><span class=\"aQJ\">8:00 a.m.<\/span><\/span> because the neighbors are sleeping.\u00a0 The entire rest of the day was an agonizing exercise in rationing &#8211; can&#8217;t shoot them off all at once, got to make them last.\u00a0 A boy who ran out of firecrackers or bottle rockets before dark might die of embarrassment.<\/p>\n<p>This year, I was up at dawn enjoying coffee in the peaceful stillness of my back yard.\u00a0 Hmmm, no firecrackers?\u00a0 Weird.\u00a0 My wife dragged me to a craft sale in Roseville, quiet as church.\u00a0 Did the entire metro go to the lake?\u00a0 Where are the fireworks?\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t hear my first explosion until nearly <span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_243067071\"><span class=\"aQJ\">noon<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0 Seriously, there&#8217;s more gunfire in Frogtown on any ordinary <span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_243067072\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Saturday<\/span><\/span> than fireworks I heard on the 4th of July.<\/p>\n<p>This nation is going down the tubes.\u00a0 When ordinary citizens can&#8217;t be bothered to flout petty regulations, we might just as well call England and say &#8220;You were right, we are too stupid to be independent, sign us up for colony status.&#8221;\u00a0 If I must be a serf to a ruler by fiat served by uncaring bureaucrats in a far-off city, I&#8217;d rather it be London than Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<p>Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, there was plenty of rebellion in my corner of Saint Paul on Saturday evening&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Mark Steyn has a column up concerning\u00a0the loss of American spirit in the present generation.\u00a0 He&#8217;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.\u00a0 My mother was [&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":[],"class_list":["post-54201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54201","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=54201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54203,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54201\/revisions\/54203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}