Well, Independence Day is this weekend, and you might expect to read a well-researched and carefully thought out treatise on freedom and liberty in this column. Nope, not here.

If you want one of those, I highly recommend retreating to your easy chair and rereading Gary Habenicht’s excellent column in this week’s Reporter. You’ll have to read it slowly to fully absorb it all, though. It takes me about 700 words to make two points, while the quoted paragraph at the bottom offers at least six. But I have to write something this week.

Recalling the Revolutionary War has been taken, so maybe I should write about the military. I don’t really think about it too much, even with two wars ongoing, and with friends who are serving. Just like police officers, our soldiers are putting their lives on the line every day for our liberty and safety, and I think they deserve our thanks on a regular basis. But there’s not much more to say that hasn’t already been said, so how about…

Guns! I could string together a fantastic analogy regarding the recent Supreme Court decision limiting the power of local and state governments to regulate firearms, and how our nation’s independence would never have happened if we didn’t have guns at our sides.

I could even bring up the statistics that show how the likelihood of a shooting spree dramatically drops after “right to carry” gun laws are enacted, or that crime drops by about 10 percent on average when pro-gun laws are passed. I could then masterfully weave that into a formula of guns + freedom = independence from tyranny, with a little Founding Fathers’ wisdom sprinkled on top. Except that my relationship with guns has always been a precarious balance between respect and fear, and I can’t imagine pulling a gun on somebody unless lives were really in danger. I’ve been on the business end of a gun just once, and if I had been carrying one, the story would have likely ended with bystanders getting hurt or killed. As it turned out, there were four cops about 30 feet away, so the story ends with no shots fired, and one bad guy in jail.

So, my guns and Independence Day analogy probably wouldn’t sound sincere. Maybe I should pick on our state’s elected officials, and compare them to the dastardly King George III, who threatened our liberty with taxes on molasses, and who regularly increased taxes on the colonies whenever England needed more money for defense (just as our state legislators did with candy, in addition to underfunding public safety).

I could even drag out a quote from Mark Twain, where he says, “No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session”. Mark Twain wasn’t born until 1835, but if I told you that he was alive during the Revolutionary War, a lot of you would probably believe me. Sorry, but it’s true.

And no column on tyranny in government is complete without a reference to Obamacare. Most provisions of the new health care legislation won’t take effect for several years, but the doomsday prophets are making predictions of America’s imminent demise. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed to hear that the only thing holding this democracy together is the market price of a monthly health care premium.

But all of these comparisons would be pretty weak, and I would simply be pushing your patriotic buttons to score cheap points on issues I have modest disagreements with.

Maybe we could realize that freedom is still an ongoing experiment, and the story of America hasn’t been completed yet. Freedom is often messy, and we’re all struggling to get along with each other, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Forget the standard Independence Day column this year. Let’s just try to go another year without blowing our hands off.

Ryan Ryals lives in Maple Valley and writes a weekly column about politics and life in the city.

Reach him at ryanryals@ymail.com.