This is an opinion column.
There has been debate, for almost 250 years, about when America should celebrate its independence.
Should it be July 2, when the Continental Congress did the deed and declared the colonies free of British rule? Or July 4, when people like John Adams, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson finally agreed on the wording to announce it all to the American people?
Adams was sure, according to the National Constitution Center, that Americans would eventually come to celebrate July 2 – that’s today, by the way – with “pomp and parade,” with “games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations.”
There will likely be some of all that tonight, though it will have little to do with independence. But on Thursday, July 4, the patriotic boom will resume, as America embraces its accepted birthday, the day those founding fathers hammered out their national press release, got it dated and printed and sent to the American people.
The Declaration of Independence wasn’t signed by delegates until August, and even those guys disagreed on what day to celebrate. They had more important things on their minds. As Franklin so memorably put it (whether he actually said it or not), “we must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Those words were true and literal in 1776, whatever day they were or were not said. Seems to me they are just as true today, if not so literal.
We will celebrate our birthday Thursday, proclaiming ourself a beacon of freedom for the world. Even as the conservative Heritage Foundation ranks the U.S. 25th in overall freedom and 20th in government integrity, below a bunch of countries including Estonia and Uruguay. Even as Freedom House lists the United States as less free than a bunch of countries, including South Korea and Mongolia, and of course mother England.
Trust in the whole system is shaky, and 70 percent of Americans believe the Supreme Court itself is a partisan body. After watching the so-called debate last week, it is tempting to wonder if the republic can survive. Not just because of our aged and angry leaders, but our disdain for one another.
It is hard to feel celebratory when our leaders tell us our country is no longer great, when being against something is more important than being for anything, when “united we stand” seems as quaint as Ben Franklin’s spectacles.
But it is good to celebrate our nation’s independence, with pomp and parade and sports and bells, if only to remind ourselves of the risk the founders faced. If only to embrace the challenge they offered, to build a country of true equality, on the ideal – kind of crazy even then – that America and its colonies and its differences and its discord could become one people.
One people. Even if they believe very different things.
We don’t celebrate our nation’s birth just to remember the founding fathers, but to remember the responsibility that is our own. To guard the freedoms we share, for ourselves and for each other, and for the future. To hold sacred the responsibilities of office, and of citizenship, and daresay of decency.
And to remember that democracy is never easy.
Jefferson himself at times despaired over the direction of the country. During debate over the Missouri Compromise he questioned whether it was all in vain.
“I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves, by the generation of 1776, to acquire self government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it,” he wrote.
I find Jefferson’s pain oddly comforting. For we know we can weather sorrow and survive injustice, anger and partisanship.
If only we can agree to love this country more than we hate each other.
John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner.