Due to the July 4th holiday my time for this column has been shortened.

A response to Kelly Scoles' letter (Juneteenth revisited):

Let me begin with the postscript:

Hi, Kelly,

I would never accuse you of writing an untruth; that would require a deliberate deception. I respect your right to opinion, while disagreeing with my opinion. With you being (as I understand) progressive, and I being conservative, this collision of opinions will often lead to disagreement, sometimes irreconcilable, as on issues of abortion and religion. Dueling with opinion helps preserve my interest in the "nano newspaper" business, especially on days like the 4th of July.
Let me answer your challenge on "truth" in your latest letter and forgive me for not having wished you a Happy Birthday.
Giving credit where it's due, except for Lincoln's insistence that passage of the 13th Amendment be added to the Republican Party platform for the upcoming 1864 Presidential election, that law would not have passed at that time. The Senate had passed it, but not the House. Republicans, take a bow (also, for the 14th and 15th)! Democrats kept the spirit of slavery going beyond the war, through Reconstruction. Remember, it was the Democratic Party that started the Civil War to preserve slavery and ended with the KKK. Maybe the Emancipation Proclamation of January, 1863, would have been more appropriate as Janteenth. After all, it landed in Texas two years earlier.

You say, "...Black Americans can celebrate the freedom of their ancestors and not give a darn whether White America approves." This is a true statement, but with vitriolic vibrations. Do you feel the same intensity about the abandonment of Columbus Day for "Indigenous Peoples Day"? "White" and "Black" Americans? Why not just "Americans"? Forbes recently estimated the total cost to taxpayers for each federal holiday is $818 million. That's a lot of money to spend to facilitate a relative handful of folks to yell yippee! before our Independence Day, while ignoring our Emancipation Proclamation.

You obviously despise Charlie Kirk for his disparagement of Juneteenth; but is that fair? "Historically accurate observations" may not smear or slander, but should they create a new national holiday just because they may be "accurate"? Should it be important that such a holiday be important to a majority of Americans? If so, Juneteenth doesn't qualify, and only provokes dissension.

I would like to see proof of, "The last slave freed was a Texan on June 19, 1865." The "truth" here is that all slaves in Confederate states were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation on January of 1863. That's a fact as well as the truth. Talk of "white privilege" is just seditious malice of a Progressive kind. Charlie Kirk is right to blame Black Lives Matter for encouraging Juneteenth nonsense. Like all Woke-Democratic Party subversion, it's all about money and political power.
You say "America, one of the last countries to discard [slavery]..." Name any other nation on this earth that fought against slavery in a 4-year Civil War to the tune of 600,000 deaths, in order to free those slaves. Slavery exists today in several nations, namely China (Uyghurs) and Middle East countries. I say America did a damn fine job! You say, if "...offended by the celebration of [Juneteenth] consider picking up a book on what slavery was like..." to understand the desire for celebration. We all understand that desire. I say it's much more important to celebrate the 600,000 men, dead in that grizzly war, who got the job of freedom done! The book of slavery is as old as mankind. Nowhere in those pages will you find any nation so determined to end slavery as America.

Huzaah! to America upon her 247th birthday. May she live forever strong and free. - without unnecessary embellishments.