Today, I will honor the memory of Washington, Jefferson, and the other brave men who waged the War of Independence. But I will not insult the Founders by claiming that the form of government they established is the same one that exists at the present day.
My
understanding of Independence Day has changed a lot over the years.

As a very
small child, it was the day when I would go with my family to a vantage point
in the Arizona desert to watch the fireworks appear. I did not yet know that fireworks
were man-made, it seemed to me that they were just a natural atmospheric phenomenon
that occurred each year on the Fourth of July.
As a slightly
older boy, I got to have the experience of celebrating the holiday in Indiana,
where it’s impossible to overlook the fact that fireworks are artificial,
because everybody – even the children – has the pleasure of setting them off
themselves.
And
besides the fireworks, my childhood Independence Days were celebrated in the
usual way with parades, barbecues, and family gatherings, of which I have many
fond memories. As a teenager I became aware that public readings of the Declaration
of Independence had at one point in history been part of the retinue, but my
attempts to reintroduce the practice at our barbecues inspired little more than
quaint amusement.
Most
Americans see the Fourth of July as a celebration of their flag, their
military, their government, and some vague concept of national unity. But to
me, Independence Day is now a celebration of one thing: the Declaration of
Independence.
Not the
flag. Not the troops. Not even the constitution. Only the document that says
that when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
same Object evinces a design to reduce us under absolute Despotism, it is our
right, it is our duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards
for our future security.
And, of
course, Independence Day is also a day for celebrating the heroes like George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, Paul Revere
and Joseph Warren and Daniel Morgan and all the other brave men who fought in
the War of Independence to make those words a reality.
The first
Fourth of July wasn’t about flags – the colonists had just done away with the
Union Jack, and weren’t even agreed on what their new flag would look like. It
wasn’t about the troops, some of whom were fighting on their side of the war,
and some of whom weren’t. It wasn’t about a certain form of government, so much
as their right to break down and reestablish governments when they felt the
need to do so. And the spirit of that first July Fourth was flatly
opposed to any ideal of national unity.
Rather, that
Fourth of July was about freedom and independence and local self-rule, and the
right of the elected colonial legislatures to break away from an oppressive
central government that wouldn’t recognize their rights.
Some
people, when they give their speeches today, will laud the Founding Fathers for
setting up a written constitution that has endured for 231 years and is
protecting the rights of Americans even today. I will not be doing so.
I am not
going to pretend that the Founders gave Congress the power to regulate every
aspect of American life, or that they intended to set up a welfare state in
which a quarter of the country’s collective income is redirected to somebody
other than the one who earned it. I will not claim that the country with the
highest incarceration rate in the world has somehow managed that feat while adhering
to constitutional protections of defendants’ rights. I will not claim that the Founders
gave the president the power to unilaterally start wars anywhere in the world,
or that they gave five judges on the Supreme Court the power to rewrite the constitution
at will, and to veto all state laws of which they disapprove.
I will
not insult the Founders by claiming that the government we have now is the same
one that they created. Rather, I will give them credit for what they actually
did – waging a successful war of independence, and setting up a good
constitution that lasted as long as the people were willing to fight to defend
it.
But the Founders
did not set up a constitution capable of protecting our liberties for all time without
any further need for rebellions or wars of independence. They did not even try
to do such a thing. They were wiser than that. They knew that revolutions are
necessary from time to time.
And they
knew that, while the Constitution may dabble in checks and balances, the
Declaration of Independence is the Check of Checks, for no mere words on a page
can constrain the ambitions of aspiring despots when the common people are
unwilling to bear arms against a government that acknowledges no limits on its
power.
Today, I
am celebrating a time in my country’s history when men were braver than they
are today. I am honouring the 6,824 patriots who fell in battle during the
Revolutionary War, and the nearly 20,000 more who died of disease and
starvation on rotting British prison ships in New York Harbour.
And I
will do what I can to keep a memory of that time alive, in the hopes that
somewhere, someday, our country’s founding principle – that loyalty to one’s
government is never more important than the human rights which that
government was meant to defend – will once again find widespread acceptance.

And the political system established then was imperfect even by the best standards of its time, since it legitimized human slavery. Perfection is not for this world, or at least not for any institution established by the naked ape. Let's be grateful for the achievements we have been able to make.
ReplyDeleteThose who believe that all has been lost, because the system we have today is a far cry from the one established in 1788, need to explain what, in their view, a modern "1788" federal government would look like? If a state decided to outlaw all gun ownership, would the Federal system allow that state's decision to be overridden, via an appeal to the Supreme Court? Would the Federal government engage in large-scale defense research and spending? Have there been any changes in the world that would require significant changes in the role of the Federal Government?