All around us today we see a deeply divided nation that appears to be coming apart at the seams with radically conflicting visions for the nation’s future, uproar in high office, and a politics of resentment and revilement.
Nevertheless, the Fourth of July brings the country together to commemorate the Declaration of Independence, the remarkable document that launched our ongoing experiment in governance that strives to improve the lives of ordinary people.
Typically, most of us celebrate with time off from work, backyard barbecues, gatherings of family and friends — and fireworks.
Our celebrations are local and familiar, and also national and grand, but it is easy to forget that it took a long time for the Fourth of July to be established as a national holiday. The deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both on July 4, 1826, confirmed the importance of the date, but it wasn’t until 1870 before Congress acted. Maine Sen. Hannibal Hamlin, who served as Abraham Lincoln’s vice president, introduced the bill that officially established the Fourth of July as a national holiday along with Christmas and New Year’s. The bill passed without opposition.
It has taken generations of repetition to work the declaration into our national consciousness and traditions. The same is true of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Great nations are works in progress. It’s taken centuries to become who we are today, including the sacrifice of more than 1.1 million Americans who died during our nation’s wars, nearly half during the Civil War.
The documents and traditions that form the backbone of our nation have always come under fire. There have always been attempts to divide and weaken the United States, to foment distrust and disunity, and to break our bonds with our allies. This time, however, the methods deployed by Russia during the 2016 election were more insidious, destructive and successful than prior attempts.
It is at such moments in the life of our nation that we are free to say to ourselves, our children, our friends, our colleagues, our elected officials, our allies, and, yes, destroyers and despoilers near and far that 241 years of bickering, bloodshed, and consensus-building unites us all. No one can take that history away from us. The generations that brought us here paid for it for us. It’s our heritage to make with what we please and improve on — or not. We decide.
So far, most of us have strived to extend the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to more and more people, saluting our common humanity rather than dividing ourselves on the basis of wealth, religion and race.
Most of us continue the struggle to assure every citizen equal protection under the law and assure that no citizen, including billionaires and elected officials, will be above the law.
Most of us recognize that we are a nation of immigrants and native people whose talents and progeny are indispensable to whom we are as a nation and what we will become.
We continue to exercise and fiercely protect free speech, peaceful assembly and the rest of the Bill of Rights, which, when they were adopted, were radical in the eyes of a world dominated by the powerful and wealthy.
Most of us believe that tyranny is to be opposed, be it King George III in the 18th century or an autocrat in the White House in the 21st century.
When we take public office, we don’t pledge allegiance to a president or a political party, we take an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
This Fourth we get another opportunity to celebrate the founding of this young republic that, until recently, has inspired people around the world with its example. Against the odds, our predecessors, Americans of all races, nations of origin and beliefs kept this great experiment in self-governance together. Now, it’s our turn.
Jennifer Kierstead and Michael Thorne Kelly are writers and business consultants. They co-founded, with other Maine residents, the nonprofit Running Start Institute, in order to implement advanced techniques for effective self-governance and problem-solving.