The 250th Fourth of July

What is the purest way we can pay meaningful homage to our republic’s founders and express a proper patriotism?

At 250 years old, America is a young country. Of course, some say we are not the country we were founded to be. They claim, with some credibility, that the republic ended in 1861, and that a nation rose from its ashes. Rome lasted a little less than five hundred years, Spain has existed for a little over 500, and England for perhaps 1,100. Are any of these the countries they began as, and if not, to what or whom do they make their patriotic appeals?

Many Americans will assume the answer is obvious without knowing whether their fellow celebrants celebrate the same things. Most harken back to the Founders, and America is fortunate to have been blessed by a group of men so uniquely capable that it is unsurprising that historians have regarded their gathering as nearly divine. Principles bound to intellectual ability—something that rarely happens, and they manifested the political philosophies of Europeans like John Locke who could not find fertile enough soil for a free republic in their homelands. The result was a republic—not a nation—that celebrated individual freedom, accepted the risks incumbent with that freedom, and distrusted the accrual of power in any form of government.

So, questions should be asked, but they do not entail foregoing the barbecue, the beer, the patriotic tunes, and the thoughtfulness of those who have sacrificed for a nation and its ideals. We can begrudge, belittle, and bemoan America’s failure to meet all of its ambitions, but today is celebratory—not condemnatory. Hopefully, amidst the fireworks there will be a moment for reflection.

A celebration of our independence invites us to be wary of looking like puppets to political masters who have spent lifetimes in decadent “public service” distracting and manipulating. Juvenal, the Roman satirist, warned of something similar in his own time: “the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil offices, legions—everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: breads and circuses.” Panem et circenses.

We are at risk of forgetting what we once meant by independence. We are the sons and daughters of revolutionaries—not the descendants of obsequious rule followers who kowtow to authority. We are called to stand up for our rights, to cherish our independence, and not merely angle for ways to make ourselves more dependent on what our government permits us. That government exists not to make rights, but to protect them. Our original argument was that those rights exist naturally. If they are ours, they cannot be permitted to us by any authority. We should not have to ask for them, or beg for them, or depend upon a sympathetic politician being elected to rob from the coffers to give them to us in exchange for votes. Citizens do not demand that fellow citizens do for them; they demand to be left alone to do for themselves. They insist that a limited government provide the negative space, free from government intrusion and regulation and control, to pursue their happiness and to be left alone. We should not work a third or more of our lives for our government. It should not have the nicest buildings and all the money. We are our government and it exists for us. It has no power beyond what we give it. This is the heart of what we meant by independence.

To celebrate this independence is to celebrate and preserve those rights that are uniquely American, and frankly to demand from our politicians and public servants that they live up to the trust placed in them. Beyond Franklin’s line about “a republic, if you can keep it,” broadly speaking, the Founders held that this form of government would only be possible if certain conditions were met by its citizens. Bear in mind: citizens, not subjects. The bounty of freedom is great, but so too are the responsibilities that correspond with that freedom.

Here are eight of the requirements necessary to establishing and maintaining a free republic.

First, “a virtuous and informed citizenry.” The citizens must have an interest in being virtuous, and they must know how to be so. They must also be educated enough to be informed. Political self-governance assumes a capability and competency for individual self-government. If one cannot govern himself, by being virtuous and informed, he cannot be of much use in governing any polity.

Second, any individual wishing to participate in such a society must be able to rule and be ruled in turn. The Founders envisioned citizen legislators—not professional politicians. What they legislate for, they must be willing to live by. They were not an elite above or beyond the laws. 

Third, the rule of law prevails as opposed to the rule of men. This republic was not conceived as so malleable that the laws would bend to influence, wealth, or whim. Sir William Blackstone had written that, “It is better that ten guilty persons should go free than that one innocent should suffer.” The line was so potent that John Adams paraphrased it while defending British soldiers during the trial following the Boston Massacre.

Fourth, the Founders, in rejecting separate European courts for the nobility and commoners favored isonomy or equality before the law. The statue of justice they adopted was that of Themis: blindfolded, scale in one hand, a sword in the other, with one foot upon a book of laws and another crushing a serpent, and her tunic exposing one breast depicting the notion that law was the sustenance of a just society.

Fifth, despite the warnings from James Madison and others about pure democracies and small republics, specifically that they, “...have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths," the Founders nonetheless chose a republican form of government: one composed of smaller, sovereign units; namely, states. It was for this reason that in 1932, Justice Louis Brandeis, described the states as laboratories of democracy. They could attempt a thing without it endangering the whole, and if it proved successful and persuasive, be adopted and emulated. It was in this sense that the Founders envisioned a federal republic.

Sixth, our government upholds natural law, and no majority can usurp the natural rights of any political minority. This is evidenced in the Declaration of Independence, the preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

Seventh, while prescribing a secular government, principally one opposed to the theocratic elements of Anglicanism and Catholicism, or the coercive effects of any religious or clerical authority, they did not imagine the country becoming immune or hostile to the salutary influences of religion. In fact, they viewed religion as integral to the morality and civic virtue necessary to sustain a republic. Washington, in his Farewell Address of 1796, had written that, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. … Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?” Jefferson’s letter about “a wall of separation between church and state,” was not a legal document, but a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, and later referenced in 1878 by the Supreme Court, and again in 1947 by Justice Hugo Black as a metaphor.

Finally, freedom was conceived as the freedom to pursue individual happiness—the good of the society is directed organically—even atomistically. Its direction is not chosen for the people by the state. In this sense, they advocated individualism, not statism. Jefferson’s inaugural address in 1801 supports this: “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

C.S. Lewis, in writing about the allegedly omnicompetent state of postwar Britain, commented that, “I heard the other day that in that country a man could not, without a permit, cut down his own tree with his own axe, make it into planks with his own saw, and use the planks to build a toolshed in his own garden.” Such a country could not be said to be compatible with what the Founders held to be the nature of freedom and the purpose of government.  

Our forebears would have been amused at hotdogs and fireworks, astonished at both our technological achievements and our astonishing folly, but they would be more impressed with their descendants for reading the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, and for our reading, understanding, and continued defense of the Constitution as it was written rather than how time and political opportunism have brought about its deterioration and dissonance. They would have further appreciated our vigilant and suspicious treatment of power, influence, and demagoguery.

This Fourth of July, let us recommit ourselves to independence. Let us speak as victors, not as victims. Let us resolve to assert our right to the fruits of our labor, not the taking of other’s to advance ourselves. Let us act as individuals pursuing our talents and happiness, not as collectivists demanding that the great forces of coercion compel others to use our words and embrace and endorse our political opinions. Let us queue up Vieuxtemps’ Souvenir d’Amérique, listen to Johnny Cash’s Ragged Old Flag, watch a fellow citizen sing Amazing Grace at the base of our capitol’s rotunda, tell our children stories of Paul Revere, or Patrick Henry, or Hal Moore; revisit Eisenhower’s D-Day speech, visit the memorials, and teach our children to be good Americans.

God bless America! Have a wonderful Fourth of July.

D. Anderson

Headmaster