Celebrating Independence

The United States of America turns 232 today, and birthday celebrations will be held across the country. There is much to celebrate. The great experiment in self-government and liberty launched in Phildelphia in 1776 has indeed kindled a fire that has spread to illuminate much of the world.

All around this vast nation, the patriotic displays of fireworks, music and speeches will meld with the merriment of picnics and ballgames, somber memorials to the fallen and hopeful paeans to the future in a panoply that is as distinctly American as hot dogs and apple pie.

Americans remain among the most nationalistic people on earth, united not by ethnicity or religious creed as are many other nations but by pride in a shared set of values that include liberty, equality, opportunity, generosity, justice, tolerance, community and democracy.

The twin contexts of our celebration continue to be the accomplishments of the past and our dreams for the future, and the tension between the two have often produced rancor among us. Yet it should not and must not be so.

The bold men who staked their lives on independence enunciated some of the highest ideals ever put forth, even though they did not fully live up to them. When many of the same men wrote the Constitution eleven years later they bore this in mind. Elections were to be held at regular intervals. The importation of new slaves would be ended after twenty years. An intricate system of checks and balances was designed to stem the dangerous aggregation of power in too few hands. A process for amending the Constitution itself was included. These provisions served to permit mistakes to be rectified and progress to be made toward the "more perfect union" they all envisioned.

On Independence Day, traditionalists emphasize the accomplishments of the past and the glories of the present. This is appropriate and good, and there is much to celebrate on both counts. Progressives often highlight the areas of American life where reality has not caught up with ideals, where there is still work to be done. This is good and necessary too. It is therefore as important that the celebratory mood of the traditionalist does not become a smug refusal to admit the nation's deficiencies as it is that the approach of the progressive avoids degenerating into a cynical view that the nation is irredeemable or the source of all the problems in the world.

Instead, to celebrate inpedendence, let us join hands to revel in the precious gift we have been bequeathed by our forebears while at the same time rededicating ourselves to those causes which have thus far been, as Lincoln put it, "so nobly advanced." Let the United States of America celebrate its freedoms and resolve to spread them, together with justice and propserity, to every corner of this most blessed land.