250 Years - Just What Are We Celebrating?

This nation didn’t begin by winning a war. That would come. It didn’t begin with writing our Constitution. That too would come. No, after a slow simmer turned to a boil by a king holding on too tightly and some Common Sense, it began by announcing to the world in the Declaration of Independence who we are, what we believe, and, in large measure, what we will not tolerate. And that is what we celebrate this week.

The document begins simply, with the words “In Congress.” Not from Congress or by order of Congress. But rather, in Congress…in the act of coming together. Coming together is what I think about as I wish America – this great, beautiful, complicated, fallible, imperfect nation – a happy 250th. I’m blessed to call her home, knowing that just by virtue of being born here I landed on second base without ever having hit a double.

The Declaration makes a bold and brash statement. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” The fact it was written by the hand of a slave owner, and that almost three quarters of its signers had owned slaves, is all the evidence one ever needs that America was an idea and that the union would ever be in need of perfecting.

That idea of America – our mission statement that is the Declaration – has always outpaced our reality. We must continue to close that gap, just as we did with the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments to the Constitution that removed the original sin of our founding and brought us legally, if not in everyone’s hearts and minds, to a place where all men (read human beings) are indeed equal.

An idea that big and the subsequent form of government chosen by the founders that has lasted this long are not the things of lightweights or empty suits. They are not conceived by choosing leaders with whom you’d like to have a beer, nor should they be entrusted to leaders one believes will blow the whole thing up. Instead, they’re the ideas of the smartest, most well-read, capable people. And yes I do understand and lament that in the case of our founding, many of these men came by that capacity because of the free time afforded them by the shackled labor of others.

It is great irony that a system of government that has so benefited the world and the cause of liberty was largely created behind closed doors and shuttered windows by flawed men who turned infringement upon their own liberty into an exercise in public virtue. Imagine an attempt today under the ever-watching eyes of CNN or the incessant, instantaneous reaction of keyboard warriors. From behind those closed doors, our founders would emerge with a system of government…decidedly not a Democracy but rather a Republic…that would better protect the rights of the minority from the enflamed will of the majority. Slave owners choosing a system of government that better protects the minority, “divine Providence” indeed.

The grievance section of the Declaration, listing 27 grievances against the Crown, speaks directly to many of the guardrails placed into our Constitution. But the section famously ends with the words, “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” This was both accusation and admonition.

The document ends with my favorite words, the ones I think of when I think about who we are and what we’re celebrating. “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” To each other.

Modern America spends too much time talking about our rights and not enough talking about our responsibilities. Those 25,000 troops that died in the Revolution – some from combat, but most from disease and starvation – also had a right to life. That 18-year-old on the beaches of Normandy also had a right to life. But they gave theirs for us.

I wonder what they would have given to have lived a long, full life? Would they suffer the “sacrifice” of showing an ID at a polling place or limiting the rounds in their gun magazine or wearing a mask in a grocery store simply because a neighbor feared an illness more than they did?

In the long list of grievances against the Crown, nowhere did our founders list “I was forced to care for my neighbors or listen to their perspective.” Perhaps that is what we should reflect upon most during this celebration...the fact our grievances are by comparison so small that we have time to exaggerate the ones we have. May God continue to bless America and once again bring us leaders worthy of guiding her. Here’s to the next 250 years!