Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Veterans’ Day. The holy trinity of American patriotic holidays. As Independence Day approaches let us remember and think about the final clause of the thirty-one words of the Pledge of Allegiance. “With liberty and justice for all”.
Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Veterans’ Day. The holy trinity of American patriotic holidays. As Independence Day approaches let us remember and think about the final clause of the thirty-one words of the Pledge of Allegiance. “With liberty and justice for all”.
Fourth of July thoughts from an old veteran
Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Veterans’ Day. The holy trinity of American patriotic holidays. As a serving Army National Guard officer and since, as a retired general, I’ve been asked and tasked to speak at commemorations and celebrations of these American landmark days.
Even though virtually all of our media, whether main stream, right-wing or left-wing, portrays us as a society hopelessly politically divided, we all seem to be able to come together to honor our nation’s war dead at Memorial Day, the beginning of our struggle for independence on the Fourth of July and the veterans of our military services on Veterans’ Day.
Whether speaking to a few dozen assembled folks at a cemetery in Bluford, Illinois, or directly to a CSPAN television camera in Washington DC, I’m always honored to have been asked to speak on one of these three holidays. To be asked to provide a few words to help our fellow citizens remember those who have died for our country, those who helped found our country and those who have served our country is an honor. In those speeches, I always reach back into our common history searching for words to inspire us today.
We are not a perfect nation. We are not a perfect people. We are an aspirational people. There are those on the right who decry those on the left. There are those on the left who impugn those on the right. There are those in the center who just wish they would be quiet and enjoy life. Each of those viewpoints believes the other is terribly, terribly wrong, in fact believes the other is stupid and even evil. The truth of the matter is that virtually all Americans are deeply patriotic.
We all love our country. We disagree on what the way forward is. We disagree on how to get there and how to pay for it and how to use the great resources of this great nation. But we all agree that we can be a better nation, a better people. We may disagree on how the Constitution should be interpreted, but we all agree that the Constitution, as the Preamble states, was written and adopted “in order to form a more perfect union”. That’s aspiration.
Too much of what we see and hear on social media, on cable news, on the floors of Congress is not aspiration but fear and frustration. Companies make money by selling fear and frustration. More clicks, more re-Tweets, more outrage mean more divisiveness between Americans and more money in someone’s pocket.
Let us reconsider what our common goal is. Let us reconsider it before we attack our neighbor for his or her political views. Let us reconsider it before we slander someone on social media. Let us remember that while we may say “we hate the New York Yankees or the New England Patriots”, we don’t really hate them. Their fans are just terribly misguided people, but they love their kids, they celebrate holidays and they, like we do, aspire to a better life. Like Yankee fans or Patriot fans, Democratic politicians don’t drink the blood of children and Republican politicians don’t want to enslave people of color. What they do want to do is hold on to power. Some of them at any price. Be wary, very wary of those who seek power at any price.
As Independence Day approaches let us remember and think about the final clause of the thirty-one words of the Pledge of Allegiance. “With liberty and justice for all”. Those words, like the words of the Preamble to the Constitution are aspirational words.
When our nation was born our constitution recognized and accepted slavery. It recognized and accepted native Americans as less than whites. It neither recognized nor accepted women as full citizens. With those aspirational words and constant struggle, we have moved forward from those affronts to liberty and justice for all. We are not there yet. We will never get there, for nations, like people are imperfect, but we can never lose sight of the aspiration.
As we, as a society, move toward liberty and justice for all, we must consider what those words mean. Liberty means freedom. Justice means fair treatment by the law.
To live in society, we cannot have complete freedom. We surrender the right to drive our cars a hundred miles on hour on city streets. And what is justice? The law forbids all from sleeping in a city park. It applies to a rich person as well as a poor person. Is this not justice? Do we need to consider how seemingly fair laws have a disproportionate impact? Is writing false, incendiary comments on social media different from yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theater?
In a complex, freedom-loving society such as ours, if the answer to a complex question is written on a bumper sticker you can be assured that it ignores the many viewpoints of those who live in a free society.
Let us join together this coming Fourth of July, as one nation, to seek liberty and justice for all.