Independence Day
As we celebrate our beloved national holiday, few Americans take time out of grilling hot dogs, eating potato chips, and drinking beer to think about what it truly means to celebrate the birth of this great nation.
In spite of recent events that make many, myself included, question whether or not America is still a free nation, there is one quality about this country that few Americans remember and many forget.
Famous speeches like Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" often point to ideas that while significant, lie well underneath the core of American society. Lincoln's speech asked if "a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." King popularized racial equality and the American dream, asking men to not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of the character.
And while representative government and racial equality are often touted, and justifiably so, as hallmarks of what it means to be an American, to be a member of a free nation, they do little to examine what lies at the core of all American ideas, of everything this great country was founded upon.
Prior to 1776, when a group of 56 men signed a document that made them traitors, the idea of a nation built upon liberty was nothing but a figment of imagination fit for philosophical musing. To suggest that "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," was an idea so radical for its time that modern men simply cannot grasp the revolutionary nature of the Declaration of Independence, and perhaps more importantly, the ideas and text it contains. For the Declaration of Independence was not just a document establishing the United States of America as a sovereign nation, it established a sovereign nation conceived in liberty, casting off the chains of despotism and tyranny once and for all.
What the Declaration did was cry out in one voice that this is the land of the free, that here a man is judged only by his character and his accomplishments, not by his birthright nor his family history. It established for the first time in the history of the world that a man has right to his own life, that a man recognizes authority to no one without his own consent, that a man is his own mind, his own body, for he is the master of his own destiny.
Modern Americans forget that. We now rely on outdated African proverbs, trite Native American sayings, and angst-ridden Marxist rhetoric to say that a man is only as good as the men around him. We have forgotten what it means to be the captain of our own ship and have instead traded it for berths as slaves on Whitman's ship of state, on the socialists ship of society, on the Christians ship of community. We have surrendered command of our own fates, mutinying ourselves in a vain effort to relinquish our duty to ourselves. And though there are men among us who will say that one man cannot do it all, that we must offer a part of ourselves to some part of society, of government of those around us, they easily forget H.L. Mencken's fair warning on liberty, that "Any man who takes the liberty of another into his own keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave."
This Independence Day remember not the birth of nation, for nation's can be torn apart. Instead, remember the idea, an idea only as old as the nation which is represented by it: that a man belongs to no one but himself. For this is what it means to be independent.
In spite of recent events that make many, myself included, question whether or not America is still a free nation, there is one quality about this country that few Americans remember and many forget.
Famous speeches like Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" often point to ideas that while significant, lie well underneath the core of American society. Lincoln's speech asked if "a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." King popularized racial equality and the American dream, asking men to not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of the character.
And while representative government and racial equality are often touted, and justifiably so, as hallmarks of what it means to be an American, to be a member of a free nation, they do little to examine what lies at the core of all American ideas, of everything this great country was founded upon.
Prior to 1776, when a group of 56 men signed a document that made them traitors, the idea of a nation built upon liberty was nothing but a figment of imagination fit for philosophical musing. To suggest that "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," was an idea so radical for its time that modern men simply cannot grasp the revolutionary nature of the Declaration of Independence, and perhaps more importantly, the ideas and text it contains. For the Declaration of Independence was not just a document establishing the United States of America as a sovereign nation, it established a sovereign nation conceived in liberty, casting off the chains of despotism and tyranny once and for all.
What the Declaration did was cry out in one voice that this is the land of the free, that here a man is judged only by his character and his accomplishments, not by his birthright nor his family history. It established for the first time in the history of the world that a man has right to his own life, that a man recognizes authority to no one without his own consent, that a man is his own mind, his own body, for he is the master of his own destiny.
Modern Americans forget that. We now rely on outdated African proverbs, trite Native American sayings, and angst-ridden Marxist rhetoric to say that a man is only as good as the men around him. We have forgotten what it means to be the captain of our own ship and have instead traded it for berths as slaves on Whitman's ship of state, on the socialists ship of society, on the Christians ship of community. We have surrendered command of our own fates, mutinying ourselves in a vain effort to relinquish our duty to ourselves. And though there are men among us who will say that one man cannot do it all, that we must offer a part of ourselves to some part of society, of government of those around us, they easily forget H.L. Mencken's fair warning on liberty, that "Any man who takes the liberty of another into his own keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave."
This Independence Day remember not the birth of nation, for nation's can be torn apart. Instead, remember the idea, an idea only as old as the nation which is represented by it: that a man belongs to no one but himself. For this is what it means to be independent.
posted by Tobin Spratte at 11:42 AM
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