The fourth of July is, for Americans, a celebration of independence, of Liberty. It's also an implicit celebration of rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air, because that is how colonial independence was won from the British.
In the last hundred years we've experienced a number of relatively non-violent revolutions for independence, liberty and freedom. In some cases, the freedom won was, essentially, freedom from violent oppression or violent conflict. India, Northern Ireland, The Arab Spring, South African Apartheid, the unimaginable dissolution of the Soviet Union and communism.
Of course, our efforts at peaceful resolution of differences, peaceful changes of regime, are intermittent and prone to backlashes, upheaval and petty violence. But the events of the past century are, in total and individually, unprecedented in our history.
Not that peace and non-violence are new ideas mind you. Peace has had an appeal for the wisest of us for millenia. So, here's some old wisdom I posted to the blog a few years ago, the day after America's Memorial Day ... another holiday prone to celebrating militarism and the glory of war. Just a perspective to keep in mind...