Liberty

On July 2, 1776, members of the 13 British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America voted to declare independence from Britain. Two days later, on July 4, their Declaration of Independence was approved. Those colonies would become the United States of America.

After 249 years, the United States has become a global superpower, a titan of industry that spans the continent. Our population exceeds 340 million people, a melting pot of cultures from around the world. The endurance of the American experiment is nothing short of miraculous.

It hasn’t been easy, though. We are a people constantly afflicted by instability, war, unrest and an ever-present sense of discontent. And, now, we are facing a new challenge— not fought on a global stage, or even on any battlefield, but fought domestically, between citizens, within the very fabric of our republic.

This moment, with all of the variables that have brought us here, feels particularly uneasy. Tensions rise as the political and ideological divides between us grow with every passing day. Increasingly, members of the government are asserting dominance over what they believe America should be— or, perhaps, what it is. The options, then, seem to be to board the S.S. Authoritarianism or to push back upon the clear violations of everything this country was meant to be, and be branded as “unpatriotic.”

But blindly supporting everything your country does isn’t patriotism. It’s nationalism. Treating the American flag as adequate insurance for any act allows and emboldens the government to do anything “for the good of the people”— whether it is or not. True patriotism, believed Mark Twain, is “supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

The increasingly ferocious debate, then, becomes the matter of what counts as a deserving act. It seems like the people who cry for freedom and use that cry to defend all manner of despicable behavior are the same ones who decry anything they don’t like as un-American.

People have never agreed on everything. In a democracy, though, that’s not a problem— it’s why democracy exists in the first place, to let people fundamentally disagree and use their right to vote to elect leaders who will work toward a better future for all Americans, without the blinders of personal biases. In order to get elected, however, politicians must promise explicitly biased policies to their base. This cycle presses onward, turning disagreements about how to solve a problem into disagreements about what the problems are into disagreements about what a fact is.

We find ourselves presently in a fire pit of our own making— a political casino where lawmakers gamble Constitution-enshrined clauses and basic human rights in an attempt to win some votes. If they win, they don’t look back. If they don’t, they keep playing until they do.

Regardless, the house never loses.

As debts pile up, freedom begins to topple. In ways, big and small, that someone will always defend, in ways that may not seem significant. It can be hard to see a moment for what it is. In his play “Botticelli in the Fire,” Jordan Tannahill writes that “It’s not as easy to tell you’re on the precipice as you might think. We convince ourselves things will more or less stay the course, that progress is a forward (line).

It’s not.

Nothing changes unless people change it— both people on the ground and those in power. There’s no certain way to do it, but accepting whatever happens as “probably okay” is dangerous. It acts in opposition to our right, the right so many fought for in 1775, to have an opinion and voice that opinion and act on that opinion. To abandon that freedom is to deny what America was built to be.

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” the founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence. “And for the support of this Declaration… we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

The founders didn’t mince words. Why should we?