Fourth of July
Two hundred and thirty-two years ago a group of men got together to approve a protest statement written by Thomas Jefferson. It didn't start the revolutionary war - in fact, the rebellion had been in progress for more than a year. It did announce the formal decision that the colonies had made on July 2 - to declare independence from Great Britain.
The Declaration of Independence was both a reflection of its time and a radical departure from established thinking. When you read the declaration there is a logical flow. It starts with some assumptions - that there is a natural law that is self-evident and that governments have to support those natural laws. Then the declaration states how the government of King George has violated the natural rights of the American colonies. The declaration ends with the conclusion that the colonies have the right to be independent from Great Britain and to act as sovereign nations do.
It's kind of ironic that we celebrate this as the birth of our nation. In reality it was the birth of thirteen individual nations forming a loose coalition. The true birth of our nation happened as a result of the Civil War - when Abraham Lincoln reaized that if the southern states acted as sovereign nations then the coalition would cease to exist. It was a profound realization that only as one nation could the aims of the Declaration of Independence be realized.
In our current political climate we are very much a nation divided. It is important to remind ourselves on this day that celebrates our national identity of those ideals that draw us together. The words of Lincoln's Gettysburg address are as apt today as they were when he delivered them in 1863.
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
Today we are painfully aware of the many men and women that have died in service to our country. Our news tells us regularly of the casualties in Afghanistan and Iran. These conflicts have created a deep divide in our country and like the civil war the wounds will be a long time healing. We can let this disagreement destroy our unity or we can resolve, as Lincoln did, to create a new sense of unity that remembers the ideas that started our nation: that all men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.