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thedrifter
07-04-05, 11:51 AM
Courtesy of Mark aka The Fontman

Celebrating independence
OpEd
Orange County Register
July 4, 2005

If the United States is, as British journalist and author G.K. Chesterton put it in 1922, "a nation with the soul of a church," then the Fourth of July, Independence Day, is the highest of our high holy days. We celebrate today not only the first step - a bloody war, the outcome of which was by no means certain, would follow - on the road to independence, but the enduring ideas on which it was founded.

If America itself is a religion, and to some extent and for both better and worse it is, then its creed, if you will, is to be found in the Declaration of Independence. It is a celebration of liberty, of the "unalienable rights" of individual people, a declaration that the highest calling of government is "to secure these rights."

"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, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

These words, whose elegance can be attributed largely to Thomas Jefferson, but which Jefferson intended to sum up not his personal beliefs but the general consensus of Americans in that day, still have the capacity to inspire us, whether our roots in America are generations deep or date to last week. As Americans, we believe in freedom and independence. That belief, rather than ethnic commonality, generations on the same piece of soil or tribal loyalties, is what binds us together.

Do some Americans mean different things when they talk about freedom and liberty? Do politicians and blackguards exploit the terms, sometimes to promote a different agenda, sometimes to subvert liberty itself? Do Americans themselves sometimes exhibit confusion or partial understanding of what liberty means or should mean?

Yes to all. It took more than 80 years for slavery, a glaring contradiction to all the noble sentiments in the Declaration, to be abolished in the United States. Freedom has been invoked to sustain wars of aggression as well as wars of defense. Both friends and foes of freedom sometimes confuse liberty with license rather than responsibility. The growth of a Leviathan state that now consumes almost half the productive capacity of its citizens has been sold as the only way to defend freedom.

Yet this land remains the magnet for people all over the world who dream of living in liberty and achieving prosperity not because of who they are but because of what they do. Despite the best or worst efforts of politicians and demagogues, liberty yet lives and holds out the promise of a better life to those who will accept the responsibilities that come with it.

The historian Walter McDougall titled his recent history of the country's early days, "Freedom Just Around the Corner." That catches an important aspect of the American temperament. We know our liberty is not yet perfected and is subject to attack. Leaders throughout our history have spoken of "a new birth of freedom" or a "new freedom" to underline the importance of a renewed devotion to liberty, to a more expansive understanding of what it means.

Professor McDougall also warned that, "[s]hould the Fourth of July ever cease to be a day 'set apart' for joy, pride and community, then the text approved on that day will turn as cold as the body in Lenin's tomb. But so, too, may it perish if the Fourth of July becomes nothing but a day of self-congratulation and pride."

As long as that sense of discovery and anticipation remain a part of our culture, however, as long as we understand that liberty is a journey and not a final state, liberty will not die in this country.


Ellie