God Bless America
“My country, 'tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty,
of thee I sing:
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims' pride,
from every mountainside
let freedom ring!”
It is a difficult thing to discuss patriotism. There is a sense in which you cannot do justice to the gratitude you have, especially for those things you did not have a hand in making. Beyond that, how does one use such inadequate things as words to express the swelling of one’s heart at a lifetime of accumulated knowledge and experience.
Still, we have duties. We have duties to God, to do what is right. We have duties to each other, most particularly our families, and we have duties to our country.
Today is Independence Day in the United States of America, and I believe I have a strict duty to acknowledge the act that our forefathers did this day. An act that changed the world and gave us a life we could not have had otherwise.
The Declaration of Independence was a revolutionary act. Few in America understand how stratified societies were prior to the political revolution put forward in that document. In his fabulous book “The Radicalism of the American Revolution”, Gordon S. Wood notes this about that old system:
“Individuals were simultaneously free and subservient, independent and
dependent, superior and inferior – depending on the person with whom they were
dealing.” (pp.24)
He also notes on that same page:
“Despite the fact that most of colonial society was vertically organized, there was
one great horizontal division that cut through it with a significance we can today
scarcely comprehend – that between extraordinary and ordinary people, gentlemen
and commoners.”
According to Wood the hierarchy had a multitude of levels that each person was subject to constant consideration of. That is why the Declaration’s statement that:
“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.”
Mr. Wood elaborates on this fact, later in that same book, saying:
“Indeed, if equality had meant only equality of opportunity or a rough equality of
property holding, it could never have become, as it has, the single most powerful
and radical ideological force in all of American history. Equality became so potent
for Americans because it came to mean that everyone was really the same as
everyone else, not just at birth, not in talent or property or wealth, and not just in
some transcendental religious sense of the equality of all souls. Ordinary
Americans came to believe that no one in a basic down-to-earth and day-in-and-
day-out manner was really better than anyone else. That was equality as no other
nation has ever quite had it.” (pp. 234)
It is easy to forget, as today, even with all our problems, we are still the most powerful, richest, and (I believe) freest on the whole planet, that this was treason. We are blessed beyond the wildest dreams of our founders (and they’d likely be very confused that Canada is a still a separate country). Yet, they had the fortitude to risk being hanged, drawn, and quartered to fight for a country they could truly call their own.
This was not a rash act though. The taxes (e.g., the stamp act) that lead to the original discontent were applied over 10 years earlier. The Boston Massacre had occurred in 1770. Patrick Henry gave his famous speech declaring, “Give me liberty or give me death!” on March 23 of 1775, more than a year before The Declaration was written. Even Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” first appeared nearly 6 months prior on January 10th, 1776, so that by July 2nd, when the resolution for independence was passed, many events had led to that moment.
Though, as Douglas Murray said in a recent interview:
“How did this republic come about? Remarkable people! I always say, I can never
get over the genius of Thomas Jefferson [author of the Declaration of
Independence]. If he had been a bit stupider, or a bit wicked, then this whole damn
country would be totally different.”[i]
Despite this genius and the greatness of those men, America is not perfect, but nothing is. However, this call to liberty has been used over and over again in an attempt to get closer to that goal that is beyond this world. Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address after one of the most consequential battles of the American Civil War noted how our forefathers “brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal.” Abraham Lincoln himself a great man, felt it was best to recall the words of our declaration to clarify the reason why the Union should continue forward in their fight.
I am not a great man. I hope only to be a good man. I hope to do my duty and play my role. That is no small thing. It is demanding and has many challenges, but it is a good thing to do. Today my duty is to acknowledge the blessing I have received as a result of what those men did. To try to appreciate how it actually changed the world. Write the history of the last two hundred and forty-eight years without mentioning America and you’ll have a very uninformed book. The ideas of our country are so widespread that citizens of this country think it’s just like everywhere else, but it’s not. I pray it never will be either. I pray that the greatness that founded this beautiful land will be like a tide, always able to come back in whenever it seems to have gone out. Until then I look to Providence and say God Bless the United States of America.
E pluribus unum[ii]
Happy 4th of July!
Quote occurs around 1:02:00
[ii] “Out of many, one” The official national motto of the United States of America