July 4th

Independence Day, a Nation in Distress, & Service to Country

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Happy July 4th!

Last year I wrote a short piece on Independence Day framed in past, present, and future perspectives. You can find that piece here.

Today I wish to offer just a few more short thoughts on where we are currently.

Independence Day

Each year on July 4th, there's a flurry of patriotic excitement that sweeps the country. Ultimately, I think this is healthy. Americans should love their country and should feel pride in celebrating on July 4th. It is a crucial part of our identity - an identity forged in the adventurism that led to colonial settlements, the struggle for independence, and the challenge of creating a lasting government that defied the authoritarian tendencies that typified the monarchies of the day.

In celebrating Independence Day, it's also important to remember that we commemorate a spirit of freedom and resistance to tyranny that we have long since lost.

A Nation in Distress

A recent trend across the United States has been to display the American flag upside down to indicate that the nation is currently in distress. The idea to invoke this symbolic gesture comes as a result of the recent legal conviction of former President Trump.

Regardless of one’s views on the former president or his conviction, many people share the view that our beloved country is in fact in precipitous decline. While I personally haven't felt the need to display an inverted flag, that generally reflects my thoughts that the nation has been in distress for a long time as opposed to merely recently as a result of what I consider to be political stage management.

Nonetheless, the country is in grave danger. It's not the type of danger that we can just “wait out.” It's going to require active engagement and hard work with an eye towards serving the country.

True service to country. Not feeding a bloated, tyrannical government while pretending that is service to country.

Service to Country

Love of country is a beautiful thing. Service to country is a natural extension of that love towards one's people, homeland, and heritage.

However, we must not confuse “the country” with “the government.” The two are not the same. For example, we mark this date in 1776 as the “origin” of our country, but our current form of government would not be created until more than a decade later. It's also important to note that our country “began” in 1776 simply by declaring independence and NOT years later by signing the Treaty of Paris with the British in 1783. In other words, the act of declaration itself served as our country’s “start point” rather than victory in the War for Independence.

(Sadly we seem to have given up so much that we supposedly won in that war and have ceded much of that ostensibly hard-gained independence).

Equating the country to the government (and therefore the levers of power behind the government) is not only factually inconsistent and historically inaccurate, but is also problematic in a deeper sense. Government was instituted to safeguard those hard won freedoms and yet now, we are in a situation in which we struggle to preserve our freedoms from our own government.

We currently find ourselves in a situation not only in which service to government can no longer be considered service to country, but also in which service to government can be considered a disservice to country.

Conclusion

A sense of collective identity is essential to preserving culture. An identity of independence is therefore necessary to maintain a culture of independence.

Grilling burgers, knocking back a few cold ones, and screaming “‘Murica!” during fireworks displays, all while clad in your American flag-pattern shorts are hollow gestures if during the rest of the year you bend the knee to those bleeding you of your health, wealth, and liberty. This “freedom charlatanism” is almost a mockery of the spirit of independence held by previous generations.

Let's seek to reignite our culture of independence rather than merely celebrate the value it once held.

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