the glorious Fourth

Independence Day. I am amazed at how strange and formal that sounds even to me. It’s the Fourth of July, or simply the Fourth. Fireworks and charcoal and a day off work. Why does it take so much effort to focus on the real meaning behind the holiday?

           

            I thought about how to mark this day on my Facebook feed and kept getting frustrated. There is no way to succinctly express what this means to me, or what it makes me yearn to do and to be in response, even knowing that I’m likely to fall contemptibly short. A good friend wrote a piece in his blog that I thought of sharing, but it was too easy to envision a vast snarling ocean of debate and empty commentary surging forth at the merest trigger of this or that phrase or definition or mention of a historical event. I no longer possess the energy for that, and that is very frustrating, because that seems to define us as a culture more than perhaps anything else. It may well be that said lack of energy is only proof of my falling short in my response to the freedom I have been incalculably gifted with. Nolo contendre.

            But at least we are free to do such things openly, or at least more so that the majority of people on Earth. I travel very little and must rely on the observations of people I trust for my insight into how the rest of the world lives. Their consensus is clear on this one point if on none other: this is about as good as it gets, all things considered. The Occupy movement, the Tea Party, and nearly every buzzword and media staple we take for granted would be met with drawn guns at every public event, and bloggers would disappear into whatever gulag the powers that be could contrive, were we only as “free” as the rest of the world. Just ask a Syrian. To be sure, outrages are perpetrated on U.S. citizens and their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms by all levels of government as a matter of routine, and few of us even seem to grasp that it happens at all, let alone how often or how blatantly. But for all that, it’s a bigger deal here than it would be nearly anywhere else. It’s status quo for much of the rest of humanity, and in most countries on the globe it raises few if any eyebrows beyond those who are directly and immediately involved. Abu Ghraib, the cop with the huge can of pepper spray, any scandal involving abuse of power with which Americans are familiar, is a scandal precisely because we have a deep-seated knowledge that Americans aren’t supposed to be like that.

            America is an ideal. Those ideals are plain in the documents that founded her, particularly the one drafted 236 years ago. It is chilling to see so many similarities between the grievances listed against King George III and today’s headlines. And it is heartbreaking to take any close look at our ideals and contrast them with the playing out of our history. We have fallen so tragically short of the good to which we have aspired, trampled on the very freedoms we claim to espouse, become in so many ways the things our founders bled and died to oppose. Yet we have not given up. I have not given up. I may fail every bit as badly, but I will fail forward. I am willing to live these ideals rather than preach them, share them rather than hoard them, encourage toward them rather than blame you for failing in them. If, and only if, there is no other way, I am willing to shed my blood or another’s for them.

            And that is because of love. A famous son of a Holocaust survivor has been quoted as saying, “I wasn't born here. But I have a love for this country and its people that knows no bounds...[My mother] is alive and I am alive because of America. And if you have a problem with America, you have a problem with me.” I seek to avoid or resolve conflict whenever and if at all possible. But it isn’t always possible. There is good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for, and I am freer to do that here than perhaps anywhere else. I wish and work for peace, stability, safety, and harmony. But if the choices of others put those things out of reach, then I aim to misbehave.

I want you to be that free, wherever you are, whoever you are. America may never live up to her ideals, but you don’t have to be perfect to be the best around, and you need never stop trying to improve. Never. Happy Independence Day.