July 4th. Independence
Day. A few thoughts about my country.
It is worth mentioning
that our present problems at the border concern people trying to get here, not
leave. In nearly all of our history it has been so. We don’t consider building
fences to keep people in, we consider fences to stem the tide of people desperately
trying to come here, to America. With all of our flaws, and there are many, the
people of the world have voted with their feet, and it’s here where they want
to be.
It is easy right now to
think of America as a nation in decline, and honestly, perhaps we are. We don’t
build things like we used to. We don’t lead the world in productivity anymore,
our education system is a national disgrace. And yet we are still the center of
entrepreneurial energy. We still are one of the few places on this planet where
the son of a sharecropper can grow into a man with a doctorate in theology, and
produce four college educated children who beget children with Master’s degrees.
So, on this 238th
anniversary of our independence, let’s remind ourselves what it was exactly
that we declared independence from. I know full well that the revolution is a
complicated story. There were a lot of moving parts and more sub-plots than an
Agatha Christie novel. But basically, we fought a war because we were tired of
someone thousands of miles away telling us what to do! If you think about it,
nothing has changed in the deepest core of the American soul. We still resist
and resent anyone telling us what to do, the further they are from us and our
lives the greater the resentment. We might get agitated a little if the local
school board member does something stupid, but when some bureaucrat from the
Department of Education starts ordering us around…watch out!
Since our founding, we
Americans have been identified with rugged individualism. In recent years we
have lost some of it. In some circles, even the term is derided. We are told
that it takes a village to do the things that our parents used to do mostly by
themselves. It is insinuated that “individualism” is some sort of code word for
anarchy. We are encouraged to look to government for solutions to our problems,
and without a doubt, some things that we the people can’t do for ourselves, we
need a robust and capable government. But those men who signed the Declaration
of Independence and pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor,
couldn’t possibly have dreamed that the government they formed would end up so intertwined
into the daily lives of its citizens.
Still, our forefathers
knew when they signed their names that if the revolution failed, they would all
be hanged as traitors, and they were all willing to die for the chance to live
as free citizens of a Republic.
I think it was Ben
Franklin who famously said, “Well, now you have your Republic. We will see if you
can keep it.” For 238 years we have kept it, but each year it bears less and
less resemblance to the nation that won its independence from Great Britain. I
some ways that’s good. Slavery has been abolished, women have the right to
vote, workers have more rights and protections than ever. But in other ways we
have gone astray, in no other area more than the realm of personal privacy and
individual liberty.
But on this 4th of
July, I’ll take the United States of America over any place on Earth, warts and
all.
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