Let's celebrate the Declaration of Independence. Let's read it. Let's think about it, have an opinion about it, try for a minute to forget who we are and join the frame of mind of the desperate state of the men who had "had it up to here" about the way they were being treated by their authority figures. Certainly we can relate. With few exceptions, we've all worked for (or been subject to) an authority who was having a hard time hearing and acting on problems you're having. And when that's the case, you either continue to suffer to your own detriment, or you step up and make a stand.
And the nascent states did that. We admire that because we would like to think we had the same level of courage -- to stand up to wrong. When the wrong is great enough, meaning when it becomes a matter of life and death for some, or a matter of thriving or withering of great swaths of people, then the stand we're willing to take has to be proportional. For a people who had the audacity to come to early America and brave the wild, it was maybe of their nature to take care of themselves doing whatever it takes to survive and own their existence without compromise.
After a hundred years of struggle to make it work, an existential civil war, a couple all-out efforts to help the rest of the world and protect ourselves against the forces of tyranny in WWI an II, we've been able to settle into the comfort of the greater part of a century of relative prosperity for most, or if not actual leisure, then enough of it to get a little soft. We want our children to have it a little soft, easier than ourselves. Should we? I guess the question I want to ask of myself is, "Do we have it in us anymore to do what it takes to preserve our integrity as a nation?"
We have some long-range (relatively speaking) existential threats, and are enough of us ready to "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."?*
Having grown up curious and literate, I've exposed myself to and studied no small proportion of the main ideas defining our lives as humans and Americans. That's a luxury many of us don't get because of our socio-economic circumstances don't support. A shame, since as a nation, we certainly have the wealth to erase that deficit. Why don't we have the will? Is it that the well-to-do, the accomplished, the wealthy don't have the breadth of vision to look deeper? Or they've absorbed some of our ideals (individual rights, reaping the benefit of hard work), but not others (giving back to the community, strength of our nation arising from the collective ability to thrive), so the selfish side is overemphasized? Are those that claim this is a Christian nation so consumed with the perceived threat to their ability to believe as they wish that they're blinded to the fundamental notion of Christianity: your purpose is to love (and serve), not horde and amass wealth?
The bottom line of the Declaration of Independence is pledging our lives, fortunes and sacred honor for the good of the people of America. How far have we drifted from that ideal? How far have I, personally, drifted? Or have I ever EVER internalized that when I think of myself as an American?
Do we have it in us as a nation to face our threats with enough force to defeat them?
Our real threats, it seems, based on what I've been absorbing through the national rhetoric and information outlets are, in no particular order: Climate change, wage inequality/economic stability, globalization, mass human migration from war and unrest, splintering of our national culture. Maybe you can think of more, but I have this irrational belief that together, with enough a sense of conscious agreement and cooperation, we could reduce the threat or find ways to effectively cope to the point where we felt it wasn't going to do us in. How do we get there? Ah, let's step up our game and figure that out. Together.
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