More thoughts on America’s 250th this 4th of July weekend
The United States of America is the greatest nation in history, and much of that greatness comes from the Founders’ decision to create a government specifically designed to serve the rights of the people.
Largely influenced by John Locke’s Age of Enlightenment ideas such as the natural, God-given rights of the individual that governments have no right to revoke, the Founders bravely challenged King George’s right to rule over them without their consent, and they sought to establish a new government created specifically to guarantee and preserve an individual’s natural rights. They boldly called these rights “self-evident.”
Of course, this was absolutely revolutionary, and it’s that great philosophical notion of the Declaration of Independence — the recognition of man’s God-given individual rights — we enjoy today, amplified by the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The Founders created a government that made sense for them in the 18th century, but they could not imagine our 21st century world 250 years later, just as we cannot imagine the future world of 2276.
If one were to travel from Boston to London on a tall ship in 1776, the voyage could take six to 12 weeks depending upon the weather.
Communications were much slower back then, too. It might take two weeks to dispatch a letter from Boston to the southern colonies and another two weeks for an answer to arrive.
When the Patriots and Red Coats faced each other in battle they fired muzzle-loading muskets at each other.
Even though Americans struggled under the King’s tyranny as British colonies — and we eventually overthrew that yoke — we launched our own colonial ambition to stretch the nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans despite the rights of the indigenous people who had lived there from time immemorial. We called it Manifest Destiny, and after the Civil War the Union dispatched its Army on a war of conquest against the native people.
Four score and seven years after the Declaration, we fought a bloody civil war to free the slaves.
During World War II, we forced Japanese Americans into internment camps.
My late friend Harley Tonooka, interned as a 17-year-old teenager, always thought it ironic that he was too much a danger to the nation to live in society, but if he would join the Army to fight in World War II, he could leave the camp and become a soldier.
He also said given the hatred of Japanese Americans at that time, it may have been a good thing that they were removed from the rest of society for their own safety.
Obviously, our country has failed many, many times to rise to and achieve that ideal we espoused at our founding. I see nothing wrong with acknowledging that fact. It doesn’t mean I hate my country. It’s a cautionary tale. What matters most is that despite those missteps and foibles, we stubbornly return to our founding principle again and again and again.
Despite all the changes the world has undergone in the 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, that idea of a man’s God-given rights remains central in our nation. That is our strength and our shield against oppression.
As long as America as a nation and we as a people adhere to our noble and revolutionary guiding principle, we can and will survive and endure anything that comes our way.
Happy birthday, America.
May God bless our great land.
