July 4, 2006 WASHINGTON -- Let's take note of what Independence Day has become and what it should mean.
To the faux-patriotic pomp and bombast we have come to associate with this day of celebration-cum-commemoration have now been added the devil's ingredients of indefinite post-9/11 security paranoia and militaristic arrogance.
We have taken too much to heart, too unthinkingly, John Adams' vision for the day, described in a July 3, 1776 letter to his wife Abigail: "I am apt to believe that [Independence Day] will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival. ... It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shews [shows], games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more."
Sadly, we have ignored the vision expressed by Thomas Jefferson 50 years later. In his last letter before he and Adams died July 4, 1826, he declined an invitation to come to Washington to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, saying of the document and the day set aside to commemorate it: "May it be to the world, what I believe it will be ... the signal of arousing men to burst the chains ... and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form, which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. ... For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."
No comments:
Post a Comment