I wonder sometimes if that group of sweating, tired, frustrated men truly realized what they were creating.
They had spent days locked together in a room where even the windows were kept shut, to keep their negotiations secret. It was hot in Philadelphia in June and July of 1776, maybe not as hot as Southeastern North Carolina today, but it was hot.
They came from 13 different colonies, thirteen disparate and sometimes desperate places. Steaming swamps and pine forests in the South; misty mountains where Indians, wolves, panthers and bears still roamed; rocky New England farms; bustling cities that would be disregarded now as no more than medium-sized towns, but were major centers of commerce 250 years ago.
The men were in hiding, too, since the Empire didn’t take kindly to its subjects disagreeing. There had already been skirmishes and actual battles. There were British troops on American soil, attempting to put down a widespread rebellion.
The men in Philadelphia were the representatives sent to the Second Continental Congress. They were Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist and agnostic. They had come from, and represented, all kinds of backgrounds: privileged and poor, preachers and physicians, paupers and printer’s devils. Some had been soldiers and sailors, bankers and backwoodsmen.
They didn’t know it quite yet, I don’t think, but they were all Americans.
This Saturday marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; a total of 56 men from what were then the 13 colonies would eventually sign their support for breaking loose from Great Britain. It was a formal, yet moot point, since armed conflict had broken out in almost every one of the colonies by that point. The men of the Congress didn’t represent a united front, even among themselves. Some wanted complete freedom from Britain, and always had; others saw this as a last resort, having given up on the desperate hope that King George III would just to keep his word and grant them the rights and privileges promised as British subjects, thus avoiding a war.
The sovereign colonies they represented didn’t agree, either: taxation, slavery, rights of common men versus landowners, the role of faith in government, prohibition vs. alcohol, a strong centralized government versus state’s rights, standing armies versus militias – all those details had to be set aside so they could later be fleshed out and fought over. Indeed some still are being argued today.
But what those first American representatives did, even before they knew they were Americans, was lay the groundwork for future generations to be able to live free, work hard, and have the chance to succeed.
They took the first official steps: their pens and paper were as loud and disruptive as the volleys of musketry and cannons that defended those inalienable rights of man, the first of which is freedom.
It’s a legacy that we have allowed to become bogged down in bureaucracy, and badly tarnished, but it’s still there. We have the basics, the bones if you will. They just need to be polished and cleaned up.
Not redefined.
Not changed from the original intent.
Not rewritten in light of the Internet replacing quill pens, semi-automatic rifles replacing muskets, government replacing charity, and cars replacing horses.
Just polished, cleaned up, and followed as the founders intended.
It’s notable that so many of those who live and work in the shadows of the founders are among the loudest when it comes to screeching about how things have changed. The founders understood that human beings by our nature love power and control, and not even necessarily for our own financial benefit. That was why the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written as they were: so a responsible citizenry would have the laws and the tools to prevent much of what we later generations have allowed to creep in, lest those sacrifices be wasted. Either way, we get the government that we deserve. Whether it is a free country with a small government, or a socialist nanny state that teaches our children about gender dysphoria and revisionist history rather than personal choice and responsibility – we get the country for which we vote.
I do not believe our country is in a decline; we have seen some very hard times, and we will see even more hard times before it’s over with, but America is still the best country in the world. America may indeed someday fall, as so many hoped would happen 250 years ago. I just don’t think it’s going to go that way.
I think, as we spend the next few days honoring those who gave so much so future generations have the chance to be free, that we are seeing a resurgence in what made America great, and will make her greater still. It’s not just the infectious patriotic fervor of the moment, either. While I mourn the America of my childhood, I have noticed more and more of that America returning. I hope, I feel, I think the pendulum has swung, and those people most feared by professional politicians – the American voters – may have awakened.
For entirely too long we have been told that’s it’s bad to be an American, while being forced to provide for people who hate everything about our country yet want to make it their own. We have been told that we must feel guilty for the past sins of ancestors we never met, folks long dead before any of us were born – shoot, we’re expected to pay an undefinable penance for the misdeeds of folks whose names most of us never will know, to people who can’t name those who were oppressed.
I for one think most Americans, true Americans, are tired of that. We’re tired of seeing the values we hold true being run into the ground and being told at the point of a metaphorical gun that we have to adapt to folks who are coming here to escape absolute social and governmental failures while they recreate that which they are supposedly running from.
I hope, in the unlikely event that someone reads these words 50 or 100 or even 250 years from now, that my optimism will be vindicated.
America will never be Utopia, of course, but I hope and pray that someone reading these words will realize how their own ancestors stepped up and helped right the ship when it was leaning too much either way, when a storm was threatening to sink the vessel built for us by those brave few 250 years ago.
With all our problems, with all the challenges, with all the disagreements, we are free.
We can go to church if we want, how we want. We can own firearms for self-defense, hunting, as a last line against tyranny or just because. We can read and write and say what we want (and be free to deal with consequences thereof). We can work and strive and save and try to succeed, and some of will succeed, even while some do not. We can associate with whom we wish or not associate with anyone. If we do not like our lot in life, we have the opportunity to pack up, go somewhere and start over again, in hopes of doing better. We can call out our elected leaders without living in undue fear of the door being kicked in during the night because we criticized the government. Regardless of wealth, race or sex, we as American citizens have the right to vote and support those we personally feel will do the best job.
We are still different, thank God. We still disagree, sometimes vehemently. We still have widely varying ideas on everything from education to the role of government to Ford vs. Chevrolet vs. Mopar.
Like those locked behind closed windows in 1776, fighting out the last details to be included in an explosive letter to the most powerful empire in the world, fearing for their homes and lives: we are still Americans, even when we don’t realize it.
We don’t have to be ruled; we can still choose to be governed, by the consent of the governed.
We are still free.
I for one thank God for that freedom, defended on the battlefield and in the ballot box. I believe we can stay free, too. It won’t be easy. It won’t be smooth. Sometimes it will be bitter and sometimes, bloody.
But we are all still Americans.
We are free.
I pray we stay that way, for at least another 250 years.
Happy Birthday, America. Thank you. Some of us still love you.
