Gaining independence, gaining liberty: a process not an event in human society

On July 4, Americans celebrate the Union’s 250th birthday. (TPOL notes that the actual vote was on the 2nd, in the Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia that hot summer.)

The Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor against the greatest empire on earth. They created a republic based on the radical proposition that rights come from God, not government. They built a constitutional system designed to restrain power because they understood, better than today’s experts, that human beings are fallen and governments are dangerous.

That act of creation, of building something for the future did not happen on a single day, or even weeks of discussion: it was a key milestone in a long process. But one of significance. While tending to focus on a precise date, what Americans actually are celebrating is a 30-year-long transformation, from about 1760 to 1790. A transformation in a small group of countries that had a massive historical impact on the entire world for the last two and a half centuries. 

In just 30 years, formerly loyal British subjects went from living under a King’s governance (admittedly becoming more and more “constitutional” as a monarchy and far from the absolute monarchy as existing through so much of history) to what? To becoming independent (dare we say “sovereign”) citizens and States who were learning their way forward to something very rare. This was done under what was seen as a radically new, republican-style federal constitution. (Of course, it had roots deep in many sources, going back to Biblical times and a variety of places in Europe and even here in North America.)

We often hear how institutions and political movements led and carried out this transformation. For example, an Army general recently pointed out how the US Army was key in every step along this transformation. So too were political factions, the various colonial/State legislatures, the Continental Congress and its supporting organizations.(Although the US Army officially claims 1775 as its founding year, before there was a “United States,” many of its units trace their beginnings back to the the 1600s and the rawest of then-English colonies. Their roots go back still more into the past, to shire militia and household troops in medieval England, Scotland, and Ireland. But that long history, changing conditions, and attempts to improve matters changed the military as well.

In the same way, the governments of the Thirteen new nations, once colonies, were the product of decades of seeking improvements and dealing with changing conditions. As well as the mixture of blood and cultural and political heritage from many sources. Not just the English, Welsh, Scots, and Irish. Include the Dutch (New Netherlands), Swedish, and dribbles and drabs of another half-dozen European versions. And do not forget the influx of French, Spanish, Portuguese, even black African, and AmerInd peoples with ideas. And challenges.

It was not a steady progress of more and more liberty: there were black spots, ideas and actions which were very much enemies of liberty. And of peace. Add to that the general human prediliction to greed? For power, for wealth, for security? All formed the mold that ultimately led, at the end of that 30-year period, to a very different group of societies, polities, and cultures.

Today, in this big USA250 bash, we hear a lot of carping. A lot of complaints about our current situation, and even condemning the fact that anyone should dare to celebrate the quarter-millenium of a system that many of those people want to destroy. To break up into pieces that can then be moulded into something very different. We are told we are wrong to celebrate until we “fix” everything that is wrong.

We do not doubt, indeed we constantly point out, that there is much to fix in our nations, in our Fifty States. So much. But we can and should look back at what has happened, what has been done, how things have improved in those 250 years.

That is not something to “fix.” That is something to celebrate.

Please do!

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