Independent musings

As I sat in our porch swing overlooking our backyard garden this morning, I reflected on this 4th of July holiday while observing the activity in my neighborhood. It seems that for many, the day our nation celebrates her independence from the tyranny of the crown holds little value.

While in our town such days as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday are observed and workers are given time off to celebrate, Independence Day garners no such honor. Specifically, while Christmas, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day and New Year’s Day and the afore mentioned Martin Luther King, Jr. holidays are honored by closing the sanitation department, on Independence Day it’s business as usual.

Now I’m not so much opposed to honoring a man who did much for the advancement of the dreams, hopes and civil rights of many of the citizens of this nation who were thought by some to be of lesser importance simply due to the color of their skin. What I am opposed to is the failure to recognize and promote the importance of the seminal event in history that made Dr. King’s ambitions possible.

Were it not for those brave men who placed not only their signatures, but their very lives on the line, there would be, in all likelihood, no United States of America today. With all its faults, the US remains the leader in democracies around the world. Since her establishment in 1776 and with her the beginnings of modern representative government, more than 120 nations have followed.

We are not perfect; indeed it is our imperfections, and our understanding of and tolerance of them that makes us great. We are a Republic that recognizes the importance of the individual freedom of our citizens and celebrate their right to be so.

We celebrate our ability to freely become the people, the individuals we choose to become. We celebrate when others achieve their dreams and aspirations, honoring them for pursuing their goals when all hope seemed lost.

It is and was that ability to chase his dream, and a nation that, despite some detractors, supported his dream, that allowed Dr. King to make his mark in the history of this nation. But without the freedom to do so, exemplified in our Declaration of Independence, bought and paid for with a terrible price in the blood of brave souls, and protected by our Constitution, he would not have been allowed to reach for his dream.

That is why I find it so counter-intuitive that our city would honor the man, Dr. King, but not the very Declaration that allowed him to act on his dream. Perhaps it is another sign of the shifting of a society and education process where the shallowness of celebrity overshadows the deep principles of democracy and the lessons of history.

"We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty." - G. K. Chesterson