Hanging on a wall of my camp is a large framed color photograph of a chimpanzee, decked out in white shirt, snazzy tie, red vest and one of those Panama straw hats only chimps and old Broadway song-and-dance men can get away with wearing. He’s puffing on a cheap stogie, and the caption under the picture reads: “What this five-cent cigar needs is a good country…”

It was donated to my collection by a friend who knew I would appreciate Mr. Chimp’s bastardization of the familiar quotation attributed to Thomas Riley

Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president more than 90 years ago.

The print never fails to bring a smile. But when I glanced at it on the eve of this Independence Day holiday it occurred to me that although political correctness and pervasive anti-smoking regulations may very well have forced the chimp to take his cheap cigar in search of a new country, most of the rest of us believe we already live in a pretty damn good one and are not about to leave.

The Founding Fathers reportedly cranked out numerous drafts of the Declaration of Independence before finally adopting it on July 2, 1776. They signed the historic document two days later – John Hancock, never a bashful chap, leading the way and hogging the signing space with a classic example of penmanship run amok. Because of travel time and distance, many colonists were unaware early on that independence had actually been declared, the omnipresent cell phone having not yet become the scourge of the colonies, thank God for huge favors.

Tomorrow, 228 years after the Declaration of Independence was given the official government stamp of approval by some pretty heavy hitters in our pantheon of historical stalwarts, America will celebrate its birthday with parades, special events, fireworks and grandiose political speeches by latter-day movers and shakers and their wanna-be replacements.

In many heartland jurisdictions the oratory designed to jack up our Patriotism Quotient for the occasion will lean heavily upon the sentiments of Katharine Lee Bates, who composed the durable standby, “America The Beautiful” in 1893.

The songwriter’s “beautiful for spacious skies” will be much invoked, as will her “amber waves of grain” and “purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain…” From sea to shining sea there likely will be much talk of the Bill of Rights and the recipe for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Betsy Ross, the rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air, one for all and all for one, glory days of the republic, keeping the faith and supporting the troops, optimism in the face of adversity, and The American Dream.

Working the other side of the street, on other soapboxes and promoting other agendas will be those who see the glass darkly and themselves as the true patriots for rocking the boat. The country is surely headed straight to hell in a handbasket, they will suggest, what with the mess in Iraq, an economy gone south and no health coverage for the average working stiff in his dead-end job, rampant corporate thievery, secrecy in government, the ridiculous price of gasoline, inflation, global warming and no one loving us these days, all of it somehow being the exclusive fault of President George W. Bush.

No matter. The beauty of the Grand Plan hatched by the Founding Fathers 228 years ago is that, in America, a robust difference of opinion is the straw that stirs the political drink. No dissent makes Jack a dull boy, and Americans could no more sit by and not second-guess the status quo than Vice President Dick Cheney could suppress the urge last week to bluntly tell that old stuffed-shirt, Sen. Patrick Leahy, what he really thinks of him, in earthy language you wouldn’t want your kids to try at home. Here, the glass-half-empty crowd gets equal billing with the glass-half-full contingent, with neither having anything to fear for aggressively taking its case to the public. Try that in North Korea. Or, previously, in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

We are free to listen to all sides of any given issue, demonstrate our support or our disagreement publicly – or privately at the ballot box, where it really counts – and no indefinite term of hard labor in a Siberian gulag awaits us as a consequence of our actions.

Granted, our choices at the ballot box might buy us any number of years of unforeseen grief. But the point is we have the freedom to make that mistake. And the opportunity to smarten up next time around.

Independence Day reminds us that not everyone in the world can say as much.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is

olddawg@bangordailynews.net