Independence Day 2011

To the Founding Fathers, there was no authority higher than the individual mind, not King George, not God, not society. Reason, wrote Ethan Allen, is "the only oracle of man," and Thomas Jefferson advised us to "fix reason firmly in her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God." That is the meaning of independence: trust in your own judgment, in reason; do not sacrifice your mind to the state, the church, the race, the nation, or your neighbors.[1]

This excerpt from an article Michael Berliner wrote a couple of years ago reminds us how radical were the ideas of the Founding Fathers. Shamefully, these ideas are nearly as radical (and possibly more so) now as they were then, a testament to how much philosophical ground has been lost in the last century or so. If we are to save the country in which freedom has been most dearly earned, we must convince Americans to "question with boldness" the overwhelming demands to accept sacrifice as noble and moral, and to pursue their own selfish interests, their own happiness, with the confidence that it is right to do so.

This I address to the Americans of the world, where you may still be found: Happy Independence Day.


NOTES

Michael Berliner, "Put the Independence Back in Independence Day,"1 Jul 2009, Capitalism Magazine, "http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/culture/5217-put-the.html".

Image from capmag.com.

The Nineteenth of April

Two hundred thirty-five years ago, British regulars and American militiamen exchanged the first gunfire of the American Revolution at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. The military component of the Revolution, which would drag on for several years (at least until Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown in 1781), was to be accompanied by the most important moral and intellectual revolution in history––giving rise to the Declaration of Independence of 1776, and the Constitution of the United States, adopted in 1787, with its first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, ratified by 1791.

I took a few photographs of the reenactment yesterday at the Old North Bridge in Concord:

A Minuteman, forced to defend his life and property, looks ahead, eager to return to his family and get back to the business of living.

It is not clear who fired the “shot heard ‘round the world,” but it ignited the military engagement of the American Revolution.

Above, a group of Americans commemorate a time––an age that seems tragically distant now––when ordinary citizens grasped and lived according to principles, stood on their own two feet, and recognized encroaching tyranny as a threat to be repelled, not as a “safety net” to which one meekly submits.