Today we celebrate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a holiday that John Adams, our second president, said should be “commemorated as the day of deliverance” by all Americans.
Independence Day is the most patriotic of American holidays, the day we show our appreciation for the creation of a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” — words that a later president, Abraham Lincoln, would utter on a bloody Civil War battlefield.
We’ve come a long way since the Gettysburg Address. Even so, in recent years, we find ourselves growing ever more divided, with public debate reduced to conservative versus liberal talking points.
Think of some of today’s major domestic concerns: Immigration. Health care. Voter fraud. The media. The environment and climate change. Gun control. Religious freedom. Gender equality. Tax reform.
Is there common ground on any of these complicated issues? Of course there is. In fact, the only sensible ground is the common one — sober, dispassionate analysis and a mutual commitment to making real progress. Instead, they are too often treated as mere platforms for howling partisan outrage.
Perhaps that’s to be expected inside the Beltway, where politics is a blood sport. But when this winner-take-all philosophy starts to infect the body politic — that’s the rest of us — it’s time to worry.
George Washington warned against the corrosive effects of no-holds-barred party politics, and we appear to be suffering the consequences today. A recent Pew Research Center survey showed that public trust in the federal government has reached near historic lows, going back to 1958. Most Americans, about 55 percent, are not so much angry with government but frustrated by it.
And while overall confidence is low, the influence of party is both evident and predicable. Republicans expressed a rising trust in government coinciding with their party’s 2016 rise to power (28 percent), while Democratic confidence plunged (15 percent).
Confidence in the nation’s future also reflected the election results. Republicans expressing confidence in America’s future rose from 40 percent to 59 percent; among Democrats, that number fell from 50 percent to 28 percent.
Encouragingly, Americans overall had either “quite a lot” of confidence in the country’s future
(41 percent) or some confidence (30 percent).
So that’s something. Certainly, Americans as a whole are proud of our national heritage. And our right to freely and loudly disagree with one other is one of the cherished hallmarks of our republic. But at the end of the day, we must take care to respect our fellow citizens, to ensure that our disagreements do not turn into hatred or contempt, and that we treat one another as equals.
Let’s take to heart the words of Langston Hughes, in his poem, “Let America be America Again,” his fervent call to our better natures:
“O, let my land be a land where Liberty,
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.”
Adams wanted the Fourth of July to be “solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”
Today, 241 years later, we continue in this tradition. But will it continue “forever more”?
If we salute not just the flag, but each other — black or white or brown, Christians, Muslims or Jews, straight or gay, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat — perhaps we’ll have that chance. We are Americans all, and we need to stick together.
Happy Independence Day!
