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Happy Birthday America

By Claude Bohn

          This Thursday, July 4^th, 2002, Americans will celebrate the 226^th birthday of the united States of America [Note: The “u” in united is intentionally – and properly - not capitalized. I have also intentionally used the Times New Roman font, for reasons that should be obvious.]

I suppose everyone is anticipating the day, if for nothing else than a day off from work, and an opportunity to enjoy family and friends on a beautiful summer’s day – picnicking, boating, swimming, cooking out, legal(?) fireworks.

          Of course, with the events of September 11, 2001 still fresh in everyone’s mind, and the ongoing – and endless – “war on terror” being constantly paraded before us, a new sense of patriotism  (or, should I say, pseudo patriotism?) has gripped this nervous, garrisoned nation State. There are sure to be flags flying as never before. Politicians and pundits alike will - no doubt - regale us with flowery, mawkishly rhetorical and cloyingly patriotic speeches and editorials. They will, without doubt, remind us of that great defining document - the Declaration of Independence, whose signing 226 years ago – and our subsequent political independence from Mother England - is the ostensible reason for our celebration.

          The Declaration is perhaps my favorite document (with the Bill of Rights a close second). You see, this nation was the first in history to be founded on an idea – a philosophy; and that idea is articulately and cogently put forth in the Declaration itself. It is that idea to which I pledge my allegiance; and, this July 4^th, it might behoove all Americans, to take a few minutes out of the day’s festivities, to sit down with friends and family, and actually READ those words, and THINK about the idea put forth in that document.  Because, as David N. Mayer wrote, in his 1997 article for Liberty, entitled “The Misunderstood Mr. Jefferson,”

“Sadly, modern Americans seem to have done a better job preserving what Thomas Jefferson has left us in bricks and mortar than we have preserving his ideas.”

          Its those ideas that (should) define and differentiate America - not the flag, not the oft debated but little observed Constitution, not the Pledge of Allegiance (with or without the words “under God”) - but the ideas – the philosophy set forth in the Declaration of Independence. If the principles of the Declaration were to ever be lived up to, everything else – all of our so-called “political questions” - would quickly settle itself.

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitles them…”

          There is a word for the idea expressed above; that word is secession. The united States of America was founded on the idea of a natural, inherent, Creator (i.e. - “Nature” and/or “Nature’s God) granted and individual right to self-government – the “consent of the governed”.

          Now, this idea – of the right of secession and self-government – was certainly no stranger to the founding generation and their immediate progeny. In fact, secession from “these united States” was threatened many times during the early years of the new Republic. No one thought it was necessarily a wise thing to do, but no one denied the right existed; how could they? In fact, up until the time of the South’s secession from the union in 1861, the right of secession was taught as a fundamental fact, even at the military academy at West Point – which used William Rawle’s “A View to the Constitution” as a textbook. Rawle’s book freely and clearly discusses the right of secession – even from the union of States known as the united States!

          However, after the Union victory in the War Between the States (euphemistically referred to as the “Civil War”), that voluntary union of sovereign States, made up of sovereign individuals – the “united States” ceased to exist; and instead became some twisted version of the Hotel California where, you could “check in anytime you like,” but you could “never leave”! Instead of the “united” States of America, a free and voluntary Republic of republics, we became the “United States”, an “indivisible (inescapable) Union” - of Federal captives. Today, in all reality, we have become the United State of Amerika – a semi-socialist, democratic nation State, with a mixed economy (part capitalist, part socialist) and ruled by an elite paternalistic class; and whose citizens have only those rights recognized by and granted to them by the democratic mob. How appropriate, then, that the only thing most of us will be celebrating on July 4th is our “independence” from Great Britain! Like Johann von Goethe once wrote: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Happy Birthday Day America! - and rest in peace.  

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