Independence Day and Thanksgiving have a lot in common: Americans gather with neighbors, friends, and family to celebrate, be grateful, eat and drink too much, catch part of a ball game on TV, maybe argue politics. As between the two I’ve always been partial to the Fourth, mostly because it occurs in the summertime when you can linger well into the evening hours, also because I prefer hamburgers, potato salad, corn on the cob, and beer to turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and wine (though I’m a sucker for mashed potatoes and gravy any time of year). And of course on the Fourth we get to spend an hour or two watching stuff blow up, which is always a kick.
This year, in the midst of our seemingly endless and all too often downright petty political battles it occurs to me that Independence Day is really a second Thanksgiving. In fact, were it not for the Founding Generation of endlessly courageous men and women we would have no Thanksgiving to speak of, because we’d still be celebrating Guy Fawkes Night and a monarchy that ceased be relevant the moment the first British Expeditionary Force soldier set foot in Le Havre in August 1914. And while Thanksgiving calls on us to reflect on a general sort of gratitude for life in general, Independence Day reminds us of the very roots of our country — both the good and the bad.
Which is an important caveat. These days our political and media classes are doing everything they can think of to Balkanize the country into two camps, one that sees a country beyond reproach and another that views it as beneath contempt. Both are bonkers, both are historically illiterate, and both deserve to be kicked to the curb as we fire up the barbecues, crank up the tunes, and crack the beers (yes, even the Bud Lights — calm down, people, it was just a freaking can).
Celebrating Independence Day means celebrating the heroes who died to make this imperfect country a little more perfect — remember, the Constitution itself doesn’t say we’re perfect, it says our goal is “a more perfect union.” While scholars and linguists can dither and bicker over what the Founders really meant by “more perfect,” the rest of us can take the words at face value. Ours is a country founded on the notion that human beings are forever becoming better at, well, being human beings. It’s easy to forget, but that was a radical concept two and a half centuries ago, an era in which the overwhelming majority of human beings lived under various forms of absolute rule, whether under monarchs, tsars, emperors, or sultans. The notion of a nation founded on the principle of improving the human condition individual by individual was revolutionary. That’s what we celebrate on the Independence Day, the historical fact for which we are thankful. Yes, the nation was deeply flawed at its inception. Slavery and the genocide of Native Americans are permanent stains on our collective national story, the atonement for which is an ongoing process.
Independence Day is a chance to be grateful for the fact that we live in a country where such progress is possible in the first place, even as so much of the world seems to be backsliding into authoritarianism. The Fourth of July is a chance to recognize that for all our faults and flaws, as a country and people (and peoples) we remain a beacon to the world — if not always to ourselves — of what is possible. We can be humbly grateful that democracy protestors in Hong Kong flew the American flag as a symbol of that potential, of what can be accomplished when the focus is on the individual and their rights.
For all the sturm und drang of modern politics and media, polls consistently show that the overwhelming majority of Americans — of all stripes, all races, all backgrounds — hold dear to their hearts the principles embedded in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and the Emancipation Proclamation, America’s collective founding documents. In fact it is the recent arrivals, the immigrants, the newest Americans, who believe in our foundational philosophies most passionately. Talk to a taxi or Uber driver from Bangladesh or Uzbekistan, working three jobs, talking on their phone as they ferry you to your destination. Talk to the Mexican immigrant working 14 hours a day at a job the average college educated American considers beneath them. Talk to them, and ask them what they think about this country. All Americans could learn a thing or two from them.
We could learn from the millions of immigrants from every nation on Earth — tired, poor, and hungry, yearning to be free — who risk everything just for a chance to utter the magic words, “That I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”
Put another way, “That I will be an American.”
At Gettysburg, Lincoln said, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us….”
The “unfinished work.” America is, always has been, and perhaps always will be an unfinished country, striving for that more perfect union. Yet strive we do, all of us, outside the deafening glare of the political stage, the media scrum, the presidential dais. Beyond that glare, not far, you’ll see the true United States: Diverse, unequal, disagreeing, sometimes arguing. Then you’ll see those selfsame people breaking bread, toasting one another, learning from each other. They do this not in spite of, but because of their differences.
So, eat up, drink up, and be grateful, America. Happy 247th birthday. Here’s to 247 more.
the all aspect report 