America the Beautiful

This year the United States celebrates 250 years since it declared independence. It has been a difficult anniversary to embrace: the country feels like it's tearing apart, that democracy is waning, that we're falling further and further away from the ideals of its founding.  

But I do think the ideals are worth celebrating. Our founding broke all the preconceptions of what made a nation. Forged on paper, wholly new, established on ideals and ruled by the people. The Declaration of Independence asserts that people have natural rights, endowed by their Creator. We have the right life, to liberty, to pursue our happiness. We have the right, even the duty, to overthrow tyrants. We have the right to form our own form of government and challenge and change it as needed. 

This new country would have no kings, no nobility, no inherited titles. Lawmakers would be decided by an ever-expanding electorate of the citizens. Their power would come from the consent of the governed. No one person, not even one branch of government would have total control; there would be checks and balances to ensure that justice ruled over might. The purpose of the government would not be one of top-down power but of securing the rights and security of all its people. 

Our Founders took inspiration from the Magna Carta, the Enlightenment, the Iroquois League, and other places, but they combined it all into something wholly new. America would inspire not just other revolutions (like France) but other movements (like abolition and suffrage) rooted in people's natural rights and the power of liberty and justice. It was idealistic, yet it worked. To be an American to be promised that you matter, your voice matters, and the ideals of freedom, justice, self-determination, and fair opportunity matter.          

America has never been perfect in living up to its promise. But the promise is there. And striving toward that promise is what defines America. It's worth remembering. It's worth preserving. It's worth celebrating. 

And though we don't celebrate the day the Continental Congress voted on independence, instead celebrating the day the declaration was completed and signed, John Adams sentiment still rings true:

“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will triumph in that Day’s Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.” – John Adams July 3, 1776