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It’s the 4th of July. I am a one-time history teacher and an avid non-fiction and historical fiction reader. I always like these opportunities to reflect on what it must have been like to be a part of our history. It’s easy to sit in the cheap seats and judge, but much more enlightening to give thought to people who lived in the time. Those people and those times were as complex and multi-faceted as our own. And perhaps, often more so.
This week I am thinking about the people, thoughts and actions that challenged the rights of Kings. Men of privilege and their families who put it all on the line. Small farm owners and merchants who signed up and fought, forming a new military and a new country. Colonies – fiercely independent – who became states and agreed to “form a more perfect Union.” What would it have been like to know my thoughts were revolutionary, that my life and my family’s life was on the line? What was it like to know I needed to rethink almost everything? And still they moved forward. What would I have done faced with their choices?
Lately I have been listening to scholars to who speak about the idea of America. People who remind us that while the authors of this country didn’t get everything right, they created founding documents that make it easier to get to right. We are not bound by blood, we are bound by creeds, we have belief in law and of the will of the governed, and above all a passion for an idea of a country we call America. The Founding Fathers deserve our honor and appreciation. They were the thinkers, they were the builders, they were the risk takers. They did what no one had done before. And the seeds they planted have grown and prospered – not just here, but in the world at large – in ways they could not have imagined.
It’s good to hear different perspectives whenever we are leaning in. Here are two perspectives (quotes) from a documentary film A More Perfect Union:
“Precisely because we are not a people held together by blood, no one knows who an American is except by what they believe. It’s important that we do know our history, because our history is the source of our Americanness.” – Historian Gordon Wood
“When people wrote ‘All men are created equal,’ they really meant men; but they didn’t mean any other men except white men who owned land. That’s what they meant. But because the ideas are powerful, there’s no way that they could get away with holding to that. It’s not possible when you have an idea that’s as powerful and as revolutionary as a country founded on the idea that just because you’re in the world, just because you’re here, you have a right to certain things that are common to all humanity. That’s really what we say in those documents. The idea that we begin the Constitution with, ‘We, the People’ . . . even though they didn’t mean me! They had no idea I’d ever want to make a claim on that. And they’d have been horrified if they’d known that any of us would. But you can’t let that powerful an idea out into the world without consequences.” – Writer Rosemary Bray
Mr. Wood and Ms. Bray are correct. Our Founders couldn’t predict the requirements and results of their service in their own lifetime and they certainly could not have imagined our world today. And yet, just as we do when we give birth to a child, they must have had faith in a future that would be both strong and troubled. And still they entered into the covenant. Sometimes I give pause and think, these originators were mostly wealthy men, they signed their own death warrant when they signed the Declaration of Independence. They could have just griped about the way the King behaved and gotten on with their lives. But they didn’t!
This week as we celebrate 245 years of declaring that “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. …
… We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. … That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Because I like to think about intention and being a solution maker, I am taken back today to John F. Kennedy’s quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” He challenged us – he challenged me – he challenged you – to be an active participant in making the American idea an ever improving reality. He’s asking me (and you) to stop complaining and start working. In big ways or in small ways (I personally like clear and simple) we each need to do our part.
The question for each of us today is “How do we celebrate?”
Do we celebrate knowing that ideas need enriching, that promises need keeping, that liberty means choices, that unalienable rights must be honored and respected.
Do we believe in us?
Do we believe in the citizen nation – the United Stated of America? Is our allegiance as strong as is required?
Their idea was profound. We must be careful to not think it either lacking or ordinary. Because an idea that is not fought for, not enriched, not shared will not thrive. And the country, and each of you deserve better. Collectively we are worth believing in, worth caring for, and worth fighting for.
Happy Fourth. Enjoy all the ways you celebrate. and God Bless America.
