225 years ago the 'Second Continental Congress' of the US drafted the 'Declaration of Independence' after the 13 'United Colonies' had won the war of independence (1775-1783) against the British Empire. The way was led to create one of the most impressive nations in the world. It took hard work and a lot of suffering too, until the US finally became the economically as well as military powerful nation it is today, based on the high principles of freedom and democracy.

You know that I am European, or German, to be more exact, so please forgive me that I won't say more about US-history, just to avoid any mistakes. What I do want to have a look at on this 4th of July 2001 however is the word 'independence'. In many ways 'independence' is one of the most important and symbolic things for what the USA is all about.

"Independence"

I assume that most of us who are reading this article here, are members of the so-called 'Free World', meaning that we live in a place where we can e.g. freely express our opinion, train and work in any job we want, or travel and move wherever and whenever we want to. The two things that impact our 'independence' most are our health and of course the content of our wallet or bank account. Sadly, some of us are also impacted by their ethnical backgrounds, which can make life very difficult for no justifiable reasons and often take away a large portion of the individual's freedom. Besides those few obvious things that steal away part of our freedom, we have all reasons to be pretty content and most of us would consider ourselves free.