Reflections on the Fourth

Today is the 241st birthday of the United States. I have seen around me today a riot of patriotism as people feel a very deep and emotional connection, as we all do, to the place that we call home. Yet seeing that enthusiasm gives me pause. What we are celebrating today is the Revolution of 1776. The moment when the United States told the world that it didn't belong to another country, it belonged to the people who lived here. The very radical principle, as every one of those involved with that extraordinary movement understood, that "all men are created equal."

That phrase makes me extremely uncomfortable, as it should every American. Our system of government is nearing a quarter millennium in age, and yet we still wrestle with the clearest enunciation of its purpose on a daily basis. I see the flags and I think about Philando Castile. I hear fireworks and I remember families are being broken up at this very moment by deportation. The songs commemorating the occasion all talk of freedom and brotherhood, but our society is wracked by fear and mistrust.

Everyone these days acknowledges that the principle of equality is obviously correct, but we still haven't taken in the full implications of the statement. If all of us are equal, then none of us should be taken from our families and returned to a country we haven't called home for decades. If all of us are equal, then all of us should have equal reason to trust law enforcement and the courts to deliver true justice. If all of us are equal, then all of us should have access to an upbringing, an education, and a livelihood that reward our talents above our social standing.

It is not, of course, to say that America has been on the whole a negative force in the world. I myself believe the opposite. The words of human rights and personal freedom are so powerful precisely because they are an indictment of society as it exists. When we look at an idea that is so clear and bright and obviously just, we cannot help but notice how shabby our actual existence seems by comparison. In spite of the numerous, frequent, and sometimes egregious violations of our own founding principle that we have engaged in, we were still willing to hold it up as an ideal. The common people of the world were utterly taken with the idea. They remain so to this day. More good has come from the willingness of a group of people to take up that cause than any government or any country on its own could possibly accomplish. We and the world owe that to the Founders.

But right next to the celebration and inspiration we need to remember how far short they and we have fallen from the ideal. It is now so often repeated that it has nearly become trite, but the man who wrote that "all men are created equal" owned other human beings as property. He kept one of them as a sex slave from the time she was 14. A significant proportion of the people who signed and fought and died on the side of those words also owned slaves. They were themselves largely aware of the contradiction, and yet it persisted through generations. 

We are all partly light and partly dark, and the society we have built is no different. But as Americans, we have been given a unique responsibility as the legacy of our forebears. They were willing to rebel on the notion that every person alive has a right to their freedom, and that necessarily includes the right to participate in the government that rules them. If we really do care about freedom as much as we say we do, and if we are going to call ourselves Americans with pride, we have to do the only thing that defines the American project and makes it distinct. We must continuously and relentlessly evaluate ourselves against the ideal that gave birth to us, and not flinch from acknowledging where we do not measure up. We have to make a choice, at each moment, to mold our society into what is best about our heritage. 

So here's to America. Not to what it is but what it aspires to be. May we never stop striving to achieve it. Happy Birthday.