The Meaning of America

Here, I talk about what America used to stand for, and how we are losing it.

What We Celebrate

Sometimes, on the 4th of July, I think about what we’re celebrating, and I wonder how the founders who signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 would feel if they saw our celebrations, and our society more generally.

I used to think of July 4th as celebrating American values of freedom and independence. But when you look around, it’s hard to find any evidence that the holiday means anything like that to most people. It seems to be more a celebration of our ability to make loud noises and brightly colored flashes of light and, as with all holidays, to stuff our faces. I am not sure if Americans know the Declaration anymore, or if they value what it says.

Here is part of what it says, a succinct expression of Lockean libertarian philosophy:

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 to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it ….

A long list of complaints against King George follows. The document concludes thus:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

There is then a series of signatures. It is worth remembering that all of those people had reason to believe that they were signing their death warrants. They had just declared war against the world’s most powerful nation; the most likely outcome was that they would lose that war and all be killed—either during the conflict, or by execution afterwards.

Why did they do it? Narrow self-interest fails. The only satisfying explanation is that they believed in what they were saying— That the purpose of government is to protect the rights of the governed, that the British government was not doing that, and that the appropriate remedy for such a situation was to cast off that government. People in those days had a lot more courage and a lot more capacity for sacrifice than we do today. I suspect that the poetical bit about pledging their sacred honor was also sincere: people at that time actually thought in those terms.

How America Happened