Sunny Fourth of July

This is America, and people are happy when the weather is nice. This is the Summer, and people enter the vacation mode. A switch goes off in their brain and they R E L A X. The Sun and the warm temperatures make their cares melt away. Plunging into a pool or the ocean brings back memories of when you did those things as a kid, and you had no worries or cares, and you could just enjoy the feeling of burying your feet in the sand, or jumping into a pool and swimming or playing underwater games with your friends. Couple the beginning of Summer with the Fourth of July celebration, and you are reminded about the greatness of America. The promise of America as set forth in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." So after sunning and swimming for most of a warm, sunny July 5, I dropped my Ford Taurus off late in the afternoon for service. My fan wasn't working and when I turned the dial nothing worked from the vent to the defrost. But my conversation with my mechanic restored a chill I hadn't been feeling all day, when we talked about how General Motors, once the biggest company in the world was now owned by the government. He said it was nuts, that socialism was taking over the country. Why aren't people worried about that? And I said this is America, people are in a good mood when the weather is nice. But as I walked back down the asphalt driveway, a thought occurred to me that there was a fine line between socialism and fascism. In socialism, the government says, "You will do this," and in fascism the government says, "You will do this." History shows us it all depends on where the accent is.