I have always loved the 4th of July, our mid-summer holiday with its nostalgic look back at the victories won by the Continental Soldiers, our American revolutionaries who threw off the yoke of tyranny and the oppression of kings.
I loved it uncritically as a child...
I loved it in its simplest way, without thinking about or questioning the traditional lore, a part of me still does.
As I grew older however, I discovered a more complete history of the revolutionary war, I came to understand the real-politics of the founders, as well as the philosophies that guided them (in one way or another), including the numerous ways in which they were morally and ethically compromised (though “compromised” may be too light a word); they were compromised by war mongering and profiteering, they were compromised by slave-holding and the exclusion of women from governance; they were compromised by religious intolerance and they were compromised by greed which drove them against the First Peoples who had been their allies in the War for Independence.
As I learned more about the historical-particularities that framed the context of the revolutionary era, it became self-evident that our nation was founded on a carefully balanced set of ideals that the founders themselves did not have the courage to live up to…they put their best selves into those documents, knowing that they were in themselves inadequate.
After a lifetime of study, I believe it is fair to say that America was founded on a compact of lies, and though I do not love the our history with its countless tragedies, I do still love the American ideal as it was articulated in its simplest form.
The preamble to the constitution states that all people are created equal, endowed by the creator (of us all) with inalienable rights, the foremost of which are: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is the self-evidentiary nature of these truths that serves as the axiomatic principle upon which the American experiment rests.
We believe that our rights do not derive from government, but that they are an inherent feature of human existence; we hold that our rights do not belong to us because we are Americans, but that they belong to us because we are, and we understand the American purpose to be the defense of those rights, both within our borders and around the world…at least, that is how it is supposed to be, and we are failing to live up to those responsibilities, both here at home and around the world.
The sad truth is this:
We have only ever paid lip service to these ideals, the articulation of which amounts to little more than wishful thinking and hope for a better tomorrow.
Today is the nation’s birthday…light the candles on the cupcakes…close your eyes and blow, watch the detritus of the fireworks dimming in the afterglow.
Within our own borders the government is trampling all over said rights: the rights of self-determination that belong to everyone, to all citizens (women and men), including the immigrant and the resident-alien, our black and brown skinned sisters and brothers, the working poor, the homeless and every human being struggling to have their basic needs met…this is not just a failure to live up to the American ideal, it is the antithesis of the dream become real.
In America we have stripped women of their right to control their own bodies, of the right to consult privately with their doctors in regard to family planning, to use the best science and medical technology available to both prevent pregnancy when it is unwanted and to advance pregnancy when it is desired…and America women are dying because of this.
In America our courts have declared, against all good reason and judicial precedent, that a president is above the law and immune from criminal culpability, if when they violate the law it occurs in connection with their official duties as president…never mind the fact that a president’s official duties can never be construed to include law-breaking; as the chief law enforcement officer the president’s duty is to uphold the law, to support and defend the constitution, not to undermine it.
America has always failed to live up to our stated ideals…it is never wrong to point this out, maybe it is wrong to expect that we can do better…maybe this is America.
The entire rationale for the American experiment rests on the rights we see as belonging to personhood, to each person and every person as a matter of ontology…we are endowed with them, not more or less but fully, not on the basis of what groups we associate with (or do not).
The expression of these truth…as codified in the United States Constitution, together with the Bill of Rights, did not at the same time abolish the institutions of slavery, give women the right to own land, to vote or ensure that they had access to many other modes of self-determination that we had come to take for granted by the end of the twentieth century; neither did it make illegal our aggression expansionism that took the form of the many wars we waged against the sovereign nations of the First People…north, south, east or west; our stated belief in these self-evident truths, in our inalienable rights, did not prevent the United States of America from entering into campaigns of genocide and extermination against them.
The founders applied these principles to themselves and to their “peers” (land-holding white males of European descent), they used those principles to justify their separation from the dominion of the British Empire, they used these principles to protect their property after the War of Independence had been won, but they refused to extend these principles to everyone within the aegis of American power, and we continue to live with the repercussions of those basic failures today.
When I reflect on the 4th of July…Independence Day, I see a day to celebrate our freedom, and our victory in the Revolutionary War; I still believe there is much to celebrate in that.
As a veteran, I know that war and combat create many opportunities for selflessness and displays of courage that most human beings cannot help but admire and applaud, even though the antecedents of war and the causes of conflict are always unjust, morally vacant and abhorrent.
I know in my heart that war, always and without exception, represents a failure of human beings to live up to the purpose we were created for. In my heart, I want to celebrate the revolutionaries, their courage and the flag which unifies us as a nation, but I find it increasingly difficult to do so..
The story of America, beginning on July 4th, is one that has many bright moments; nevertheless, we remain a foolish, cold-hearted and ignorant people, unwilling to recognize the millions of slaves who built our first cities, who farmed the plantations that fed the country and served as the foundation of international trade for our fledgling nation.
We must recognize them, and all of the laborers who established our first industries, as well as the millions of people belonging to sovereign nations that we crushed in our westward expansion, people who we starved and slaughtered without mercy, displacing them, outlawing their religion and customs, erasing their languages as we attempted to eradicate their heritage.
I find it difficult to celebrate the 4th of July because of this history, and I would like to know who among us, knowing the history, finds it easy?
A person would have to be a monster to be unmoved by the tragedies that ensued after the signing of our Declaration of Independence.
Today one of America’s two major political parties is advocating policies that have stripped women of bodily autonomy and criminalized any action that might be taken to assist them with relocation to another state where they might be able to exercise their freedom. They are openly discussing ways that they might ignore the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the principle of birthright citizenship, even though the Supreme Court has ruled such actions as unconstitutional. They are not talking about amending the constitution further, they are talking about ignoring the law, rounding up migrants and those who they deem to be dissidents, putting them in camps to be disposed of.
Federal police are murdering American citizens who stand up for their immigrant neighbors.
The president is having American citizens arrested on trumped charges to hide his failures at the reflecting pool, the Department of Justice id going along with it.
This same party would raise the voting age, disenfranchise the young, make it more difficult for the elderly and the disabled and the poor to cast their vote, they will tell any lie, no matter how absurd to achieve their ends…today all American’s are in grave peril.
The 4th of July should be a time of soul searching, deep reflection and community, forget about the flag waving and jingoism.
Ask yourself what it means to be an American; consider the immigrant and the refugee, the stolen people, the enslaved people, the conquered people, the vanquished people…and then consider the revolutionary in her and his time and place…
We are their descendants. All of us come from all of them: the immigrant, the refugee, the stolen, the enslaved, the conquered, the vanquished; we are their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. We are one people with a common history, and one set of ideals…I hope we are, I wish we were.
We are a great nation, if and only if we remember the whole story of our people, of all of our people, of our triumphs and our tragedies, the complete mélange of ambition and failure…save the fireworks for the moment when we can embrace these truths without fear…though not without shame.
