The calendar might read July 4 today, but many Americans began celebrating the most patriotic of national holidays on Friday and continue to do so through Monday. There is, of course, nothing wrong with marking the nation’s birth in an extended manner as long as it is done in a safe and responsible manner. This year, though, celebrations of Independence Day are tempered by the knowledge that we are a nation and a people at war abroad and beset by problems at home.
Nevertheless, people here and wherever Americans reside should celebrate the day that commemorates both individual freedom and the independence of the nation. As we do, though, we should remember and honor the American and women who put their lives at risk in the name of the freedom we too often take for granted.
Central message
They do dangerous duty in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places where those in America’s uniform are both symbols of democracy and, too often, prey for those who oppose the message central to the Declaration of Independence. Their willingness to serve remains the highest expression of support for the cherished ideals put forth in the declaration we commemorate today.
Those ideals have been the nation’s calling card for 234 years. The Declaration crafted and signed in Philadelphia rejected tyranny and embraced freedom and the rights of the individual. It prompted a war that brought forth a united nation unlike any other in the world. It continues to inspire, despite the current political partisanship that sometimes seems to put the nation at risk, allegiance to a government that generally reflects the will of the people rather than demands of a favored few.
The weekend’s rites honor those whose words and deeds built the foundation of the United States. They also honor those whose actions have helped perpetuate the nation and its ideals in the more than two centuries that have followed.
Americans, as is their way, will mark the day — the weekend — with patriotic speeches and parades, with ball games, with sales, with abundant food, travel and with massive displays of fireworks. All of that is a natural outgrowth of the seminal events that prompt the Fourth of July holiday.
John Adams, the mercurial New Englander who was one of the main architects of American freedom and later president of the United States, foresaw such celebrations. Not long after the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress, he wrote to his wife that he hoped the event would be “solemnized with pomp and parade … bonfires and illuminations.” How right he was.
The United States, for all its freedoms and its allegiance to equality, remains a place where the gap between the rich and the poor is expanding, where jobs are hard to secure and where a growing number of individuals find it increasingly difficult to provide food, medical care and other necessities of life for themselves and their families. Even so, Americans have much to celebrate today.
Despite the wars, despite the worst ecological disaster in the nations history and despite the economic woes that continue to plague the nation, the United States is still a beacon to the world.
Common goals
It is a place where independence is fact rather than a dream. It is a place where individuals, by and large, can rise and fall on merit rather than family background and connections. It remains, despite it all, a nation where allegiance to a common goal and democratic ideals has far more adherents than competing doctrines.
Even in troubled times, those are certainly reasons to celebrate the nation’s birth. As we do, we should remember the reason for the holiday and the obligations that confers on celebrants. America’s journey is unfinished. There is still much to do if the United States is to provide liberty and justice for all. Today’s festivities are a reminder both of the great distance this nation has traveled and of how far it still must go to live up to the ideals put forth by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence.