Happy Fourth of July to our brother Americans!

Happy Fourth of July to our brother Americans and that goes double for my cousins in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave! Independence Day: As Filipinos, we should be proud to be the first in Asia perhaps in the world to go from a dictatorship to a mass based democracy with the People Power revolution so well emulated by many peoples in Poland, Germany and others. We belittle ourselves if we do not recognize that we are also the first to form a national government in what was a colony or under the hegemony of a Western power. We beat India, Indonesia Malaysia, even China's Dr. Sun Yat Sen's Republic of China. It is a fact that wars are won and lost, but the first spark of national identity was ignited by Andres Bonifacio in his Haring Bayan government. Unless I am mistaken the Americans have not yet won the Revolutionary War on July 4. So they do not celebrate "Independence" but most importantly the "Declaration" thereof!