Walking through the store today, I was greeted with several, Happy 4th of July. Unlike Memorial Day, when those comments come, I snarl, the 4th is one of the four original federal holidays to commemorate the Continental Congress formally adopting the Declaration of Independence. Since July 4, 1777, when Philidelphia held the first annual celebration, Congress was still involved in a continuing war, and as a nation came together and celebrated the birth of a union.
It’s the 225th Anniversary
This year, as we approach the 225th anniversary of that day, it’s hard to be jubilant when our country is so divided. We are a nation on the brink of civil war, with violence in our streets and hatred in our hearts. The past year has been filled with turmoil and unrest, and it seems that we are no closer to resolving our differences than we were when the year began. The last month the January 6th Committee has continued to unwrap the onion showing the true depths to which the Trump Administration would go to maintain power. The Supreme Court of the United States has overturned Roe v. Wade, removing the right to privacy and bodily autonomy from American women.
This 4th of July, while watching Trump and Trump’s supporters talk about patriots and what patriotism is, I find myself reflecting on the words of Frederick Douglas, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgiving, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.”
Did the Civil War South Celebrate Independence Day?
Even during the first two years of the Civil War, the south commemorated Independence Day. Because they felt their cause for secession was divine, and because they saw it as the time to emphasize the Founding Fathers’ concepts, Southerners viewed it differently from the north. Southerners didn’t see the United States as a celebration of the Union, but instead as an affirmation of individual freedom and liberty. By 1863, the South abandoned the 4th celebrations, “the Richmond dispatch reminisced that in past celebrations, alcohol-fueled the patriotic sentiments of Southerners, and everyone happily honored the nation. However, ‘the day is now changed. We have no holiday. The ruthless enemy who has trampled upon every principle and right commemorated by the day itself, given no intermission for festive enjoyments, were we so inclined.’”
Now we have also Trumpian patriots in Congress, candidates running on nothing but lies, the erosion of individual rights, the rise of white nationalism, and the idea that America should be governed by Christian sharia law.
What would the Founding Fathers have to say about a former president who just this morning, stated that one party “cheated on the Election” and continuously pushes disinformation that he “got more votes than any sitting President in history“. By all evidence, was at a minimum a co-conspirator in attempting to falsify an election. Is this the government they fought for, one where a sitting president would openly attack the foundations of our Democracy?
My Struggle
On this 4th of July, I find myself struggling with what it means to be patriotic. I am proud of my country, that I served for thirty years, and the values it was founded on, but I am also disgusted by the state it is in today. I am saddened by the division and hatred that has consumed us, and I am worried for the future.
As we celebrate the Fourth of July, let us remember that we are a nation still in struggle, still fighting for the ideals of liberty and justice for all. Let us recommit ourselves to the work of making America a place where everyone can truly enjoy the pursuit of happiness.
I don’t know what the future holds for America, but I do know that we have to do better. We have to be better. We owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to the world.
Happy 4th
One Response
I struggle with the meaning of the 4th of July now. But for a brave few true Republicans in the Republican Party who knows where we would be?
We should be celebrating the rights and freedoms we have, that our founding fathers, flawed as they were, bequeathed to us. Our Constitution and its bill of rights is a living set of documents with mechanisms built in to modify itself as times change. But now we have an activist conservative majority SCOTUS, long in the making with the final pieces engineered by Trump and McConnell, that is intent on reducing women’s rights to control their own bodies, disenfranchising large swaths of citizens, and expanding 2nd Amendment rights without reasonable restrictions, even upsetting the majority decision in Heller written by Justice Antonin Scalia.
We can have a better future but it’s going to take all of us. We need to overcome the many obstacles Republican led state governments are throwing up and participate in the electoral process and vote this fall, even school board elections matter. A Republican majority in either the House or Senate will be disastrous.