We celebrated America’s 239th birthday yesterday. To most people it’s a chance to get off work and relax. Most of the population doesn’t sit back to consider the declaration of independence or the revolutionary war or the impact and meaning of these to their lives.
The few people who are paid to do this, social commenters, political writers, and those that make a living speculating about such things will usually crank out the same series of articles every year. Either the founding fathers were God-fearing capitalist patriots trying to forge a new form of government in a howling wilderness or they were atheist, proto-marxists throwing off the shackles of oppression and creating universal suffrage for all. Most of the written pieces fall somewhere along this continuum with some detours delving into the issues of women’s suffrage or slavery. Depending on what websites you visit you will see one opinion voiced more than the other.
Of course not one of these views is wholly correct. The founding fathers were a mixed lot of idealists and scoundrels, laissez faire capitalists and anarchists, land owning gentry and yeoman farmers, church elders and worldly men. Each group had its own agenda and reasons as to why they wanted to break away from London’s control and the only thing they had in common was a realization that they would need each other’s support to achieve independence.
One thing that they all recognized however was the need to do something new and radical. To post a logical declaration of grievances against their existing government and provide a sort of logical proof for the need to break away and to form a new government of their own.
I think that has been a vital part of the American character since before the start. The urge and ability to try something new and not shy away from it just because it wasn’t something that had been done before. Of course innovation and new thinking can occur anywhere in the world and at any time in history but I think it’s rare that it has ever been so widely accepted as it was in the early American era by such a large population.
I think it was a side effect of the excitement of being part of a new nation in a new land that allowed people the freedom and flexibility to think about new forms of government, the willingness to gamble on new ventures, the acceptance of new technologies, that sense that over time the nation would “improve” itself and that technology would leverage us all into a new golden age.
I find that somewhere along the way we lost that vital spirit. Perhaps as early as the late 19th century but certainly after World War II. We went from being a nation excited and curious about the possibilities and challenges of the future to being a nation in love with a past that for the most part didn’t exist in one way or another. From being excited at the prospect of change and new thinking to being terrified of the idea and demanding that we stay in a social and mental limbo. From pulling together in common cause to blaming each other for past and current woes.
Rather than trying to solve situations to find the maximum benefit for all of us we have balkanized our populations into competing and often hostile camps that could maybe pull together and benefit each other but for the most part practice mutual antagonism as a sport.
If we continue on our current route I am certain that we will not see another 239 years. I don’t see us going past another 100 years. Either our own inertial forces will rip us apart or competing nation states will begin using our confusion against us and will feast on our self-made misery.
We should respect the past and learn from our mistakes and follies if at the very least to honor the sacrifices of those that came before us. But we should also remember that they made those sacrifices not for us to stay in the past but to progress forward and up into a better tomorrow.
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