The American Revolution lives ... and lives ... and lives | R. Bruce Anderson
The fourth of July is nearly upon us, with all that entails – this column goes to press on “between” dates, with the fourth falling between, so my thought is to hit you up now as opposed to after the fact.
Warning: This is going to be a very sappy column, reflecting directly my sometimes difficult, loving, critical but heartfelt and definitely permanent romance with this country, and all that’s in it.
When the founders declared independence from Britain, they were angry – the Declaration of Independence was an angry rant, a political, social and philosophical manifesto, proclaiming they had been cruelly betrayed by a dilettante, deceiving sovereign. If you’ve not read it, do. The philosophical stuff comes up front, calm and to the point:
“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…”
A sly smack to the autocrat, that “created equal” stuff, and more to the point, the “deriving their… powers from the consent of the governed.” Not the stuff monarchs want to hear at all.
But then:
“[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends” (they wrote), “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”
BOOM. Message sent.
What follows is the dirt. The section starts with “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism…” and the “long train” is then provided in a detailed list, with the sense that they can’t be corrected, and that there’s no going back.
Gutsy for a bunch of gentlemen farmers writing from a place with few roads, no army, and little more than grit and smarts to push them through it, addressing arguably the most powerful man in the world, along with all his henchmen, armies, navies, and gold to back it all up.
Chancy stuff, and a pretty risky venture. Riskier, in some ways, once we’d actually won and had to create from scratch the first true representative republic.
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An "attitude of gratitude" seems to be sometimes lacking these days, not only for what the founders did, but what they allowed us to become. The journey of this nation has been one of constant argument, amendment, false steps, corrective action, making it work. Change has always been the rule, here, and change is sometimes caused by protest and complaint. But whining is simply un-American, and a disloyalty to our political roots. If something needs to be rectified, fix it. Work to repair it, resolve it, make it work.
We live in a nation with one of the highest standards of living in the world. We have, and have kept, a representative democratic republic in which the opinions of both the majority and the minority are considered.
We dispute, debate, disagree and sometimes are furious with one another, and yet here we are. Americans together, in Union, united in part by our heartfelt right to disagree and survive the process. We overwhelmingly out-class every other nation on earth in our ability to defend these rights against those who would impose themselves on us — militarily, economically and politically. And our example has been an example followed by nations across the planet, new and old.
The simple truth of the matter is that monarchs of the old style are gone. New style autocrats briefly frighten us all, then drown in the toxins of their own bad political chemicals. One dictator after another has risen and come crashing down in rapid collapse.
On the Fourth of July, we need to remember with reverence who started all this – and celebrate that 248 years later, the exemplar, the original paradigm, stands solid.
R. Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay, Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics and Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Florida Southern College. He is also a columnist for The Ledger and political consultant and on-air commentator for WLKF Radio in Lakeland.