America celebrates the Fourth from sea to shining sea
It is the high holy day of the American idea. It is also a beer bust. The Fourth is that odd American mixture of patriotic fervor and bleary ease, of sunburn and a deeper stirring. The Founders adopted the Declaration of Independence in July and not in February (imagine sending fireworks up in a snowstorm), and so the national birthday is both the nation's most powerful rite of communal identity and merely the lazy and unreflective beginning of high summer.
But this year the Fourth was...
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