July 5, 2022

Independence Day

Celebrating U.S. Independence Day, President Joe Biden on Monday said freedoms in America were under assault and urged citizens to engage in ‘principled patriotism’ while the country faced economic challenges and national divisions.” Reuters

Both sides celebrate the birth of America and the continuing progress toward realizing its founding ideals, while acknowledging the country’s shortcomings:

America is the ultimate human experiment… People still come to America any way they can. Some come in observance of our laws, others in violation of our laws. When they arrive, they tend to retain their cultures and identities. But soon, these cultures intermingle. They borrow from one another. And eventually, they amalgamate, becoming a different and uniquely American race and culture…  

“But the one characteristic that unites all Americans is not our language or ancestry or land. It is an idea of individual freedom, which all Americans, regardless of their background, have in common. From the Ghanaian shoe store owner to the Mexican landscaper to the Chinese professor to the Italian tile setter to the Polish roofer, we are all united by that one idea…

“Critics say [the founders] were white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant heterosexual males who excluded and persecuted Native Americans, women, and blacks. This is true. But they also created a nation that eliminated slavery, reversed the wrongs of discrimination by race, religion, and gender, and freed others who lived under tyranny, asking for nothing in return but the ground upon which to bury those who died to free people. They created the system of government that righted those wrongs and under which we live today. America is the greatest nation in history.”
Michael Tremoglie, Washington Examiner

“Racism, sexism, inequality, hateful speech, climate change, battles over abortion, immigration and many other issues demand our attention. Amid this maelstrom, many Americans pine for the shared purpose of our Revolution, World War II and its aftermath. But stand back and adopt a larger perspective. Imagine showing our country to a Greek or Roman, to John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to the Framers of our Constitution, or to the leaders of any country or city-state over the three millennia in which our species has celebrated what it calls ‘civilization.’ What might they see?…

“They would see a country in which a majority of citizens devote considerable energy to moral discourse: debating the proper balance of embryonic and maternal life, focusing on injustices and inequalities, quarreling in courts and legislatures about how to govern, including when and whether to admit immigrants (now entering this nation at a rate of 1 million per year) as potential citizens. No one before World War II ever experienced a democracy of citizens this numerous, this diverse and this engaged… I wish we fought less and more productively. But our struggles reflect American virtues. I will take this America with its enmities, conflicts and divisions. Indeed, while regretting our country’s faults, I sing its praises.”
Richard Danzig, Washington Post

Other opinions below.

See past issues

From the Left

This July Fourth finds us riven about how to read our own founding and the documents the Founders bequeathed us… Those of broadly progressive convictions regularly invoke the Preamble to our Constitution and its commitment ‘to form a more perfect Union.’ The implication of that ‘more’ is that we will always find ourselves less than fully perfect and having additional work to do…

“In this reading, the Constitution is not a straitjacket designed to keep the country where it was in 1789 or 1868 or whatever other date a nostalgic conservatism might point to. The Constitution is a framework for self-rule and (small-r) republican government that assumed the nation would embrace change when necessary. Remember, as the historian Gordon Wood taught us, the Founders were radicals for their time…

“For those on the progressive side who feel they are on the losing end of today’s conflicts, our national birthday this year can be an occasion to remember those who came before them and never gave up on [the Rev. Martin Luther] King’s vision of bending the arc of our story toward justice.”

E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post

“This Fourth of July demands that we remember who we were and who we are, but also ask difficult questions about what kind of country we aspire to be. Do we trust ourselves enough to openly teach, discuss and debate the hard parts of American history with our children and future generations, or do we move toward an insularity defined by uncritical thinking that cheapens that very history?…

“Should we expand the right to vote or restrict access, rendering our country less democratic and a perpetual political tinderbox?… Is the story of January 6 an important chapter in the continuing saga of American democracy or will it be the nation’s epitaph – the beginning of an end that could have been avoided if we exhibited more faith in not only our founders but in each other?…

“At its best, the grandeur of the American experiment is that we, collectively, get to decide for ourselves who we are going to be.”

Peniel E. Joseph, CNN

From the Right

“Even after a tense Supreme Court term, elections that have boggled the mind, and a pandemic that weakened our economy, America still remains a land of opportunity and freedom. More than 1 million immigrants enter America yearly. More than that try to, even risking death. America allows more immigrants to enter than any other country…

“The democratic process is not for the faint at heart, and America’s Founding Fathers would not have designed it to be any other way: Freedom requires effort… For all America’s flaws, and they’re obvious to almost anyone regardless of political party, the fundamental ideas that shaped this democracy are still intact.”

Nicole Russell, Washington Examiner

“Ever since the 1980s, public schools along with many private ones have ended or curtailed civics and social-studies classes in favor of easily testable subjects like math or reading. In 2011, all federal funding for civics and social studies was eliminated… Only one-quarter of Americans can name all three branches of government; a third can’t name any. An eyebrow-raising 37 percent couldn’t name any rights protected by the First Amendment. Only a third of Americans could pass the citizenship test that legal immigrants have to take…

“Every time I speak to high-school or college classes, I am stunned by what they haven’t learned. How our government’s separation of powers was set under the Constitution; how federal, state, and local governments work; how bills are originated and how they go through the system, including amendments; the powers government has — and doesn’t have…

“Ronald Reagan used his farewell address a quarter-century ago to presciently warn Americans were losing a sense of ‘informed patriotism.’… ‘We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important,’ he urged parents and teachers. ‘If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.’”

John Fund, National Review

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