By Charles C. W. Cooke
Monday, July 04, 2016
Today is my son’s first Independence Day.
He doesn’t know that, of course, because he’s only
three-and-a-half months old. But my wife and I do, and we’ve attempted to mark
the occasion nevertheless — in loco
filius, if you will. As such, Jack will be dressed today in a special
onesie (stylized picture of a milk bottle, “Come and Take It” tagline); he will
wear his Old Glory sun hat; and he will be involved in all the festivities that
the family has to offer. Naturally, none of this will make even the slightest
bit of sense to him; as a matter of fact, today will be the same as is any
other day in the life of a baby, just with more people around and a surfeit of
BBQ. But you have to start somewhere, right?
Because Jack is three months old, it is acceptable for
his parents to treat July Fourth as an excuse for the purchase of kitsch. But
what about after that? What about when he is five? Or twelve? Or nineteen? As a native Brit, I am
accustomed to the self-deprecating instincts that are the hallmark of British
society, and I am acquainted, too, with the reflexive aversion to patriotism
that is all-too customary in the birthplace of Western liberty. In consequence,
I know that if I were to leave my son befuddled by America’s Independence Day
proceedings, he would probably stay that way in perpetuity. And that would be a
tremendous, unconscionable shame — a shame that, frankly, would reflect poorly
on me.
Once they reach a certain age, we expect our children to
know what is what. As soon as they start speaking, we begin to teach them right
and wrong; once they are old enough to be trusted with responsibility, we
monitor closely how it is being used; and, in a process that is hopefully
never-ending, we make sure that they know as much about the world around them
as they are capable of taking in. It is in pursuit of this lattermost goal that
we designate national holidays. In May, we celebrate Memorial Day, lest we
forget what we owe our ancestors. In January, we observe Martin Luther King
Day, that we might bring to mind the most uncomfortable parts of our nation’s
past. And on July Fourth we arrange an ostentatious display of patriotism, in
resounding commemoration of the moment that a ragtag bunch of philosopher-king
rebels set their revolutionary ideals before a candid world, and changed human
history forever.
In certain quarters it is fashionable to disdain these
occasions, and, in so doing, to treat the past as if it were wholly
disconnected from the present. Indeed, staunch defenders of the American
Founding are often told that to embrace modernity it is necessarily to jettison
the antique. “Why,” it is asked, “do we celebrate these flawed men and their
pieces of parchment? After all, John Adams couldn’t even have imagined Tinder.”
Though narrow, this critique is indisputably correct.
John Adams could not have imagined
Tinder, and I daresay that he had no conception of high-frequency trading, of
synthetic fibers, or of advanced robots either. But, ultimately, that is
irrelevant. The beauty of the American Founding was not that it provided a
detailed roadmap that could predict the minutiae of the future in glorious
perpetuity, but that it laid out for all people a set of timeless and universal
ideals, the veracity and
applicability of which are contingent upon neither the transient mood of the
mob nor the present state of technology. Among those ideals are that “all men
are created equal,” and that they “are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights”; that “Governments are instituted among Men” in order to
“secure” their “rights”; that legitimate power derives “from the consent of the
governed”; and that if any such government is seized or corrupted by tyrants,
“it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” At times, the United
States has failed disastrously to live up to these principles, and, on at least
one occasion, significant forces within the union have rejected them outright.
But that an ideal has been violated in no way undermines its value, and it seems
patently obvious to me that the country has been blessed by having had an
eloquent North star to which its downtrodden could point from their moments of
need.
If July Fourth is to represent anything concrete, it
should serve as a golden opportunity to ensure that that star does not wither
or implode or disappear from public view. In Britain — a less propositional
nation in which the constitution is uncodified, in which there are no
indisputably “foundational” documents, and in which there are no widely celebrated
national days of meaning — it can be difficult to convey the importance of core
national values, whatever those may be. Americans, by contrast, have fallen
heir to an embarrassment of riches. If I cannot explain to my son how lucky he
is to have been born here — and if I cannot demonstrate what a heavy
responsibility it is to keep the candle burning — I do not deserve to be called
“Dad.”
In a 1788 letter to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison
outlined the didactic justification for the construction of the Bill of Rights.
“Political truths declared in that solemn manner,” Madison proposed, tend to
“acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and
as they become incorporated with the national sentiment, counteract the impulses
of interest and passion.” Such benefits are not limited to the Bill of Rights.
Just as Americans will proudly cite the first ten Amendments in the course of
defending the ordered liberty that is the birthright of all free men, so they
are prone to cite the most explosive literature of the revolutionary era. If
internalized and cherished, Abraham Lincoln argued, the Declaration of
Independence would have the salutary effect of acting as “a rebuke and a
stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression,”
for Jefferson’s work was not “a merely revolutionary document” but the
embalming of “an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.”
Yes, even to three-month-olds. Come and take it.
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