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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Thoughts on our Independence Day celebrations

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Independence Day is approaching, a holiday which I find to be joyful and difficult as it simultaneously embodies so much that is admirable and offensive about my country, wrapped up together in red, white and blue bunting. I cherish the values that formed this country and I stand in awe of the founders of our country whose actions showed what a committed few can accomplish. Those profound feelings are juxtaposed with the excess we Americans so adore and the crazy political scene in our country, which at times slips right into the surreal in my mind...”Okay, is this real or did we just somehow slide into a Saturday Night Live episode?”

Our 4th of July traditions of excess include consuming lots of grilled nitrates, potato salad, beer, and lemonade; parades with horns and sirens blaring to the detriment of eardrums; WAY too much sugar tossed to the kids scrambling to increase their haul; waving the flag to sell something or to look good and literally burning up money exploding fireworks that seem to get louder every year. What is this love affair with noise, anyway? Unfortunately, my house is surrounded by outcroppings that amplify the nearby explosions, rattling the windows in my house, terrifying my pets who don’t comprehend “war” but know something terrible is happening with no place to hide.

OK, I do enjoy the beautiful display, but I long for a volume control to tune out the glorification of the bombs bursting in air. Plus, the money spent is mind-boggling: in 2014, over $1 billion was spent on fireworks including $695 million purchased by individuals for private use because apparently the public displays aren’t enough, echoing Liberace’s philosophy as the king of excess, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.” Imagine the alternative uses for that money! My personal fantasy is that Ely would sponsor a city-wide picnic with dancing in the streets, fostering connections between neighbors and visitors. My larger dream would be the successful creation of a Department of Peace, well-funded to teach the skills of peacemaking and non-violent communication to children and adults alike; to provide conflict resolution teams to schools, organizations, businesses and families; to pursue a path of peacemaking from the inside out, recognizing these are learned skills that need to be taught.

One year I was walking with Sen. Amy Klobuchar and her supporters in the parade, handing out brochures when a woman pulled back her hand as if I were trying to give her a live coal. That surprised me; Amy has family here, comes from a mining family and generally seemed to be everyone’s darling. I asked, “Do you have some issue with Amy or a question I might answer?” She angrily spit out, “The parade is for the kids! The politicians should go home.” I refrained from saying that we wouldn’t be celebrating if those early politicians had gone home.

In light of all that – and in spite of all that – I love it that we come out together as a community for the parade, enjoying the easy conviviality of the crowd; playing silly games in the park; cheering on the participants who are marching to the band music with their sled dogs, doing precision drills with lawn chairs, promoting organizations, businesses, and political candidates, wearing their passions on their T-shirts. There’s always a few well-lubricated folks who feel the need to jeer and boo at parade participants who represent views they don’t share, perhaps not getting the irony that people march to celebrate the essential freedoms we fought for, particularly that of free speech, which protects both the right to march and the right to jeer.

So, let’s step back in time for some appreciation of how this all originated. It’s October 1774, and the colonists in British America were increasingly unhappy with King George III’s heavy-handed power-mongering over the colonies, which up until that time had operated independently of each other. Fifty-six delegates from twelve colonies secretly convened what is now called the 1st Continental Congress, in Philadelphia. Think of it...fifty-six people seated in Washington Auditorium in Ely wouldn’t even fill up the first two rows...and these men of vision and will launched a radical political experiment in the name of freedom, among them John Adams, his cousin Sam Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Jay and Patrick Henry. Imagine being one of those people, with the future of our very young country in your hands, making decisions that could plunge the country into war and terminate what rights remained intact. They were fearful but fed up. Patrick Henry dramatically expressed the will of many: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

At that first congress, Thomas Jefferson presented A Summary View of the Rights of British America, a forerunner to the Declaration of Independence, protesting the Intolerable Acts, the most well-known being the Stamp Act, imposing taxation without representation. Other acts strictly controlled commerce and trade, prohibiting colonists from making products from fur they trapped on their own land or iron they mined, requiring them to buy British products. Jefferson made it clear that they were asking the king for rights, not favors, and that the king would be well-advised to respond. The delegates organized an economic boycott of Great Britain in protest and petitioned the king to address their grievances, agreeing to reconvene in the spring, if the king did not repeal the Intolerable Acts.

He did not. Battles were fought at Lexington and Concord in April. The 2nd Continental Congress convened in May with some moderates wanting to hold out for peace with Britain, but the king ignored their petitions, regarding the Continental Congress as an illegal entity with no authority and stating that the colonies were “in rebellion”. The colonists recognized they could not find a peaceful solution, created the confederate army and made plans to declare independence, asking five men to draw up a formal statement of their intentions. John Adams was asked to write it, but he said he was not well-liked enough to bring it forward and get it passed, so Jefferson did most of the writing; he was only 33 years-old.

The Declaration of Independence has been hailed as an extraordinary piece of writing and philosophy. It guaranteed rights to people by virtue of their personhood, simply because they existed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Rights were still limited to white males, while the future would bring the fight for equal rights for women and people of all races and economic status.

Yet it went well beyond what was needed to declare independence; it established the philosophical basis for a civil democracy. This was a radical departure from the existing British rule that imbued people with rights and power based on the authority and whims of the monarchy linked with the church. Jefferson, Adams and others had the vision for a new era in the world when people could be free and make decisions for themselves with the enlightened view that reason and knowledge could actually influence human behavior, that the world could be made a better place and individual lives improved.

I highly recommend the DVD “John Adams”, a series which covers the time period up to his election as the second president. I was moved by the vision and tenacity of the founding fathers but also by their humanness as they struggled to work together. Paul Giamatti portrayed John Adams as a fallible human being, often frustrated in his ambitions, feeling disrespected and sidelined. He bellowed and complained quite a bit to his wife, Abigail, played by Laura Linney, who was recognized as playing a significant role in her husband’s (and therefore our country’s) success, supporting and advising him.

Today many are also fed up with the political status quo, recognizing our systems are malfunctioning. Do we have the will to recreate America, to fix or replace those systems? John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, within three hours of each other. Let’s raise a glass in their honor on this Independence Day and consider what our roles might be in this ongoing American experiment.