The month of June is straddled by Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, and contains Juneteenth, officially now, plus Flag Day. As something of a patriotic “season,” it carries a background flavor, quieter than that of the Holidays, but in the air nonetheless.
The culmination of this season is of course Independence Day. This whole blogsite is dedicated to the creed of the Declaration of Independence, which is of course the object of our celebration. The fireworks, parades, and traditions of the day are of course wholly appropriate and important. They might also move us to take a deep look at the Declaration, as this site aspires.
Recall that the document declares America a new “People,” seceding from Britain. It names this People only as “We,” who hold certain truths as self evident – a statement which defines us by this creed. Its truths are, of course, that all humans are equally and inherently endowed with rights they cannot lose even if they wish, and that governments exist to secure those rights. The rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – each person is entitled, beyond any human authority, to live life as they choose.
This last point is easily overlooked. “We” declared ourselves an independent “People” in the name of personal rights. Independence was not only from Britain, but from hereditary rulers claiming divine sanction, from “rights” only granted by rulers’ discretionary dispensations of specific privileges, and from rulers’ arbitrary impositions on the ruled. We rejected not only British authority but any such top-down rule.
All our civic, public, and national triumphs are rightly celebrated. Independence was a political event. Its spirit of rights has re-shaped the whole idea of nation and state, to enable “excitedly new forms of society and culture.” Yes, this nation debunked divine royal mandates, defeated totalitarians, and projected a new norm of republican self-rule. Yes, too, its spirit unleashed growth and prosperity that epitomizes the modern age. Even on our dark side, our creed sets a conscience that pushes us to fix the breaches; knowing our existence rests on it, we eradicated formal slavery and its political vessel.
But at bottom, the purpose of Independence was not truly political. It gives primacy to personal rights, for people to live by their own chosen lights. Of course, the Declaration’s signers knew that any population needs social order for any to be able to exercise any such rights. Governments were explicitly included in our Truths, but for the purpose of securing rights and subject to the consent of the governed. The logic of this truth points toward free persons recognizing each others’ rights as each would enjoy “my own,” accepting impartial laws and enforcement for all so that each can best maintain those rights, in an implicit social contract. We should bear in mind, as we fight over specific forms and measures of government, that our disputes are over means to our national ends; we exist as a nation for the same fundamental, shared purpose.
In that purpose to nurture personal rights, we identify ourselves by our common holding of the founding creed. This means this nation’s identity is of a new variety, no longer defined by received identity of tongue, land, ethnicity, king or church. And, where those identities recall traditions and feelings inherited from the past, our national identity unfolds as we live by our lights, into the future. The past does carry comfort, in the known and familiar. But it is limited, fully contained in histories that we do not shape, but receive.
The future is of course unknowable, and of course can be frightening. Old identities in part take their appeal as comfort against the unknown. They reflect the ancient fear of the primal state of nature. But in our creed, Americans have a national vessel that leaves each of us to take on the future by whatever means and lights we choose. It accommodates our ethnic heritages, as personal sources of psychic inspiration. But all such choices are “my own” for each of us. In our right to choose, there also we have the right to invent, to grow, and to shape the future, as I see fit. America’s identity points us to infinite possibilities, which rest in our hands. Our community of common holders of the founding creed gives us a social and political vessel that protects these rights. We need to tend to that vessel, but its purpose is to secure our rights, for each of us to do as we will, as best we all can.
From this new kind of freedom Americans have led humanity through new frontiers, in manned flight, in jazz music, in mass access to a certain dignity afforded by mass access to goods ranging from indoor plumbing to stylish cars to highly variegated entertainment. We cannot know what further frontiers humanity might explore. Along the way, we need to maintain that freedom, to keep fidelity to principles of impartiality, and equality in the unalienable rights. Our creed’s mandate for government reminds us. But any disputes about how to keep that fidelity are over means to the ultimate ends. We must not lose sight of those ends amid disputes of conflicting “isms” and factional loyalties. America exists for every individual to become master of their own fate and ours together. That’s what it conceived itself for.
Common Conviction 