Heralding July 4th

This piece was published at https://www.smerconish.com/news/2020/7/7/why-we-celebrate-the-fourth-of-july

Profound American statements sound the call for celebrations on this date.

We celebrate that our forebears were dreamers who founded the Nation upon visionary principles. “Every great dream begins with a dreamer.”¹

We celebrate our historic stances for freedom and human rights. We reject tyranny with a profound “no” and, when told our intransigence could lead to arrest, we acknowledge “you may do that.”² But we do not yield.

We celebrate freedom of speech. We venerate brilliance, while we tolerate ignorance as liberty’s price. We know “[t]o suppress free speech is a double wrong” that “violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”³

We celebrate that we should “always look at the positive” and should “never, ever focus[] on the negative of things.”⁴ We acknowledge our founders were far from perfect. “Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.”⁵ We too are imperfect, but those righteous principles are omnipresent. We evolve to their enduring favor. We know the “eyes of all people are upon us” and we climb to be “as a city upon a hill.”⁶

We celebrate the constant vigilance necessary to implement our principles. We are aware that “the only permanent danger to the hope that is America, comes from within”⁷ and “our success is only possible because we have never treated those self-evident truths as self-executing.”⁸ We are reminded that our charters “propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given rights” and “[n]ot one of them pretends to bestow rights.”⁹

We celebrate our fellowship and mentors. We appreciate that “[n]one of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps,” but “because somebody … bent down and helped us pick up our boots.”¹⁰ We recognize that “[e]ducation is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”¹¹ We aim for “[i]ntelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.”¹² We see that “[w]e can’t let people drive wedges between us … because there’s only one human race.”¹³

We celebrate our democracy. We see “[h]ere, in this very first paragraph of the Declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can ‘the consent of the governed’ be given if the right to vote be denied?”¹⁴ We embrace that we were the first people to declare our right to govern ourselves. “For [now 244] years this doctrine of national independence has shaken the globe” and, even in clouded times, “it remains the most powerful force anywhere in the world today.”¹⁵ We bear the burden to warrant that “government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”¹⁶

We celebrate that our principles spur us forward, not backward. “The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.”¹⁷ But we pause to remember those who gave “the last full measure of devotion”¹⁸ to just causes. We witness that “[t]he graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.”¹⁹ We recall that “[g]enerations of Americans have marched, organized, petitioned, fought, and even died to extend those rights to others, to widen the circle of opportunity for others, and to perfect this Union we love so much.”²⁰ We grasp that “[t]his world of ours … must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”²¹

We celebrate American ingenuity. “Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks.”²² We tackle the difficult and dismiss the easy, because the hard goal “will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win[.]”²³ We trust “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”²⁴

We celebrate dreams of a better future, with earned confidence in their realization. “We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.”²⁵ We advise each other “[a]lways remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”²⁶ We “dream to give ourselves hope” because “[t]o stop dreaming — well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.”²⁷

And celebrating “with malice toward none, with charity for all,”²⁸ and with one evolved adjustment, we close in reverence with a most gifted expression of these sentiments: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all of us are created equal.’”²⁹

John J. Hamill

July 4, 2020

¹ Harriet Tubman

² Rosa Parks

³ Frederick Douglass

⁴ Sonia Sotomayor

⁵ Malcolm X

⁶ Ronald Reagan

⁷ Ronald Reagan

⁸ Barack Obama

⁹ Susan B. Anthony

¹⁰ Thurgood Marshall

¹¹ Malcolm X

¹² Martin Luther King, Jr.

¹³ Dolores Huerta

¹⁴ Susan B. Anthony

¹⁵ John F. Kennedy

¹⁶ Abraham Lincoln

¹⁷ Thomas Jefferson

¹⁸ Abraham Lincoln

¹⁹ John F. Kennedy

²⁰ Barack Obama

²¹ Dwight D. Eisenhower

²² Yo Yo Ma

²³ John F. Kennedy

²⁴ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

²⁵ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

²⁶ Harriet Tubman

²⁷ Amy Tan

²⁸ Abraham Lincoln

²⁹ Martin Luther King, Jr.