“A republic, if you can keep it.”
–Benjamin Franklin’s response to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
The year could be one among many, but the date, always the same. July 4th is a great American holiday, a date celebrated in various iterations since 1776. And in the most basic terms, July 4th is a celebration and remembrance of America’s independence from the British Empire. The Declaration of Independence was born, adopted by the Continental Congress which was comprised of delegates from the 13 American colonies.
Though fireworks replaced canons firing 13 times to represent the original number of colonies, and mock funerals for King George III no longer mark the day, we still carry the collective memory of our founding.
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Pilgrims, adventurers, nomads and ramblers are we – descendants and newcomers both. A stilled people in the end, our relationships to each other held together by delicate cloth and a belief that all things good can be fostered in this land.
Freedom as we know it.
Independence Day is a time to hold these thoughts. In a visceral way. As if to clutch the thing we might have in our palms. Circle our hands around it.
Close your eyes. Feel the smooth, seamless center of the thing we call freedom.
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Remember, too, that we are an experiment. A long, slow-moving inquiry without a final answer. Lincoln said it best when he stated that the American experiment is a test of “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” Our system, a living body susceptible to failure in the end. The founders knew this truth, that republics and democracies, systems in which power rests with the people and their representatives, are delicate, problematic in a way that all intricate things are. And they knew too, that these systems of government were unique, especially prone to subversion from the outside and malignant forces within.
It’s an unnerving prospect – frightening, really, if we allow ourselves to go down that path. Dispiriting to the core if we dwell on it too much or perhaps, not enough. But down that path we must go: Afterall, there is truth in the familiar adage that eternal vigilance will save us from collapse as a nation.
Eternal vigilance, yes. Just as Thomas Jefferson is rumored to have said. Hobgoblins are near, and tricksters surround us – those who look for and anticipate with joy any signs of America’s weakness.
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When does the drama turn, though – cross the line from hairbrained rhetoric and skid straight into the dangerous lane? The sound of a “tick” just before the grenade explodes? Or will it be a slow meandering, a peaceful sort of descent, the end of the beautiful experiment while the lights go dim.
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So many signals, like lights flashing along the highway, flares lit in the middle lane.
There’s the clatter and screech of the news media skewing the reports of the damage done to the Iranian centrifuges; the elevation of Zohran Mamdani, a man rightly called anti-American to candidate for one of the most important cities in the world. Let’s not forget the charade that was “No King’s Day,” the participants uninformed enough to spread sheer nonsense about the state of America.
And the media has taken the shape of a strange motif, to divert the eye from the main point, a distraction – a pattern long-set now. Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, slammed CNN for its premature reporting of America’s strike on Iran’s nuclear sites:
“Because you cheer against Trump so hard, in your DNA and in your blood, cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad, you have to cheer against the efficacy of the strikes.” Hegseth’s words are truth.
What we need are voices that convey clarity, that don’t shade and obstruct the truth. That do not undermine our own self-interest.
It’s an old story by now – the stylized machine, spinning and whirring. A never-ending centripetal force.
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I don’t know. Is it natural, do you think, for the animal to writhe against its nature? To break down from the gut? Is it a stage, perhaps? A passage to traverse? Or are we too weary? It has been a long road.
No matter.
This 4th, reserve some space from the clamor. Breathe deeply into your lungs. Pull in the air as if it’s antecedent, as if memory, the chronology of our own inheritance. It’s there – what you need. Centered again in the palm of your hands.
