Happy Independence Weekend

This guy has a clear understanding of the principles of self-government.

So, yesterday was the anniversary of the Continental Congress voting to declare their independence from Great Britain.  Tomorrow we will celebrate the publication of that vote by exploding Chinese fireworks and drinking German beer.

We seem to feel a need to commemorate things.  We latch on to dates like limpets on the hull of a ship.  We are about to enter 9/11 Tenth Anniversary Rememberathon that will induce a combination of tears and nausea alternately depending on what's happening at any given moment.  Roger Cohen starts it of here.  It's a fine essay, but somewhat navel gazing.  Eloquent but somehow adding up to less than the sum of it's fine writing.

Anyway, back to 1776.

As I wrote the other day, it is saddening to be a history teacher in an era of rampant historical illiteracy.  Of course, this era began with Herodotus and has continued unabated ever since.  We have never really known or understood our past, which is why everyone knows the Santayana quote.  We continue to repeat the errors of our grandparents.

Instead we focus on superficialities like dates and anniversaries.  What's more important?  Your wedding anniversary or your marriage?

Take the Declaration itself.  The Unitarian church - full of jihadists, no doubt - has a reading of the Declaration, and it's a great reminder of how boring the document is once you get past the stirring preamble.  It's mostly a whiny list of things George III did that we find mean.

He didst come over for a barbeque and not bringest his own beer or even potato salad.
He didst expel flatus in a closed room and not say, Sorry, that was mine.
He didst finish the milk and putteth the empty carton back in the fridge.

But we forget all that and focus on the "all men are created equal" without really dwelling on what that means. We forget that the most important documents in our history are all aspirational.  The Declaration's radical assertions of human liberty and self-governance were unique in the world at that time.  Today, those ideas rule the world.  The Constitution proffered the dream of a "more perfect union" and Madison hoped the document would last 50 years, but he was not hopeful.  Over 200 years later, we still abide by its structures.  The Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave in actuality but created an expectation that one day all Americans would be free.  The Gettysburg Address, the Four Freedoms speech and MLK's Dream speech are all about a world that might be, not one that is.

If you don't understand that these documents are about creating a better world, then you cannot understand the basic idea of citizenship.  You cannot understand the promise of America.  For centuries, people understood that the circumstances of their birth would be the circumstances of their life.  America - a product of the Enlightenment - was about perfecting the world.  That has been the foundation of the American Dream.

So, in between beers and barbeque, in between hot dogs and hot asphalt, take a moment to dedicating yourself to improving this country, this world.  Look beyond the calender.  Look beyond the surface.

We're kind of screwed up right now.

We could use all the help we could get.