Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor

It's Independence Day, the Fourth of July, a day that sits differently with people.  I understand the despair, the anguish, the anger--and yet, I still find this holiday hopeful and a reason for hope.  I am always inspired by those men who signed the Declaration of Independence on this day in 1776. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, so great was their belief in what they were doing.

I realize that those men were committed to freedom for a much more narrow section of society than many of us would want to believe. It's good to remember how slowly those freedoms came for the majority of us, a good day to remember how much effort (and money and blood) it took. It's a good day to think about our commitments, our values, what we hold most true.

It's also a scary day, to be sure.  It's hard to sit with the fears that we're sliding back to a past that most of us don't want to relive.  Sure, angry people might make us believe that a majority of our fellow citizens would vote to reinstate slavery along with a variety of worst practices from the past, but that's simply not true.  Angry people are very loud in our current society, and it's easy to neglect those of us doing good work to make a more inclusive society, the way we always have done.

It's the kind of day where we might wonder if we're headed to armed insurrection, which hasn't been unknown in our country, which, after all, was born out of an armed insurrection.  I don't think that we are.  Some might argue that we're already in a state of armed insurrection, with mass shootings a daily occurrence now.  But that kind of violence is different than a civil war, different than a war to fight off colonizing imperialists.

I also know people with collapse-of-Rome fears.  But the collapse of a civilization usually comes much more slowly than one person's lifetime.  I do think we're headed to a very different future, but will it be a post-U.S. future?  Not any time soon.  I am much more worried about what climate change is going to do to countries and empires, but most people won't be talking about that future on this day.

I can't resist posting this picture of me and my dad, dressed up as colonist and British soldier, standing in front of a painting of British soldiers:

I have always been amazed that the rowdy colonists could pull off this defeat of the greatest empire in the world at the time. I don't think it's only that they were fighting on their home territory that helped them win. Plenty of people fight to defend their homes and don't win.

My reading of history has always taught me that the unexpected might happen--and yet, it often doesn't.

For all of the attempts to divide us, communities have found ways to stay together.  For all attempts to shred the Constitution, we've been knitting it back together again. May we continue to do so.