The Fourth of July

Fireworks, BBQ, liberty bells, and lots of red, white, and blue. That's what I remember the 4th of July being about when I was young. A celebration for the birth of a nation and the formal declaration of independence from a monarchy: that's what I was about in high school. What does it mean now?

My political opinions have changed so dramatically over the last few years. I used to think that while occasionally responsible for stupid things and waste, there was a place for government in our lives. It had to be involved, because otherwise how would we educate our children, how would we have a system or roads, how would the unfortunate survive? I dismiss these questions nowadays because I know better.

This gradual rejection of common wisdom and the things most Americans take for granted often clashes with that is expected of us during certain times. I'm an atheist, so I don't follow the religious side of the American experience. I'm a free-market laissez-faire capitalist, so I don't follow the minutiae of politics as life or death. I'm grossly skeptical of any person saying I have to sacrifice for the sake of others, so I don't follow the folks who mouth the line as if it were sacred.

I see people preparing for the festivities for 7/4/2004 and I wonder what they are really celebrating. What events, people, and ideas are they affirming? Would they have the intellectual courage to examine those ideas and apply them consistently to their lives? I have enough trouble doing this for myself; but at least I have a good grasp of what's at stake.

I think about the words within the Declaration of Independence:

• When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another...
  
• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
  
• That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...
  
• Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
  
• But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
  
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent...

Aside from the enormous jumble of contradictory concepts in that famous document, it still has power. It's the singular announcement that people have the right, perhaps even the duty, to tell the government imposed on them to fuck off and die.

Courage like that doesn't exist in substantial quantities these days. Those who do, who at least stand up to the cacophony of statist nonsense blaring at us day in and out, occupy a large portion of my blogroll: Erik at Brainville, Billy Beck at Two-Four, Arthur Silber at The Light of Reason, Radley Balko at The AgitatorKevin Carson at Mutualist.org, Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings, the folks at No Treason and Catallarchy and the Mises Institute and Somewhere Over the Rainbough and at Reason's Hit and Run and Libertarian Samizdata. Among us there are differences both cosmetic and fundamental, but we all agree the current vectors of our societies are in the wrong direction.

I'll be out with friends tomorrow, on Sunday. We'll be using the 4th as an excuse to throw a party and stay out late and to have a three-day weekend. We may engage in some political discussion (it's almost inevitable with my friends).

At the end of it, I'll come back home and ask myself if Americans understand their government is betraying the ideas it was established upon and why they blankly cheer for this annual holiday. For while this is still the best country to live in on this planet, this distinction is a difference of degrees that grows narrower with each year.

Perhaps the 4th of July should be a wake, rather than a rally.

Posted by Drizzten at July 03, 2004 01:40 PM