Inspiration on the Fourth of July?

© 2018 Peter Free

 

04 July 2018

 

 

A couple of things bug me — regarding the ideologically careless way — that we celebrate Independence Day

 

First, is the Fourth of July's increasingly militaristic conflation with Memorial Day. Celebrating imperialism and troop courage was not the Day's purpose.

 

Second, is White America's irritating pretense that 1776's call to freedom benefited everyone.

 

It did not. Which in my estimation means that we ought to be using Independence Day to inspire a fuller achievement of its textually embodied ideal.

 

 

Recall the Declaration of Independence's claimed intent

 

To wit:

 

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

 

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,

 

and to institute new Government,

 

laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 

 

 

In view of that initiating statement of purpose

 

Consider US Army major and historian Danny Sjursen's modern perspective regarding it:

 

 

Taking into account women, slaves and Indians, the patriot Founders excluded probably 60 to 70 percent of the American population from their dreams of life, liberty and happiness pursued.

 

[T]he imperfection, and ambitions, of the Founders might remind 21st-century Americans to beware the misuse of the past, and to always seek the gradual improvement of society and the achievement of a more perfect union.

 

[T]his author agrees with Benjamin Rush that, as he said in 1786, the American Revolution is not over . . . . We, today, are waging revolution still.

 

© 2018 Danny Sjursen, American History for Truthdiggers: Whose Revolution? (1775-1783), TruthDig (07 April 2018)

 

 

Waging revolution still? — not exactly

 

Customarily, the Fourth's meaning is drowned in beer-drinking, hotdog-eating and fireworks-shooting revelry.

 

Most of us have vanishingly little idea what Independence was aimed toward or against. And even less, where today's version of Freedom is, or should be, headed.

 

 

The moral? — A day that should be action-inspiring, generally is not

 

Instead, the Fourth seems to deepen the intellectual and moral complacence to which Pale-Faces and the Ruling Plutocracy are, for the most part, addicted.