The Fourth of July

The founding fathers’ collective experience of European monarchs imposing a state religion with the same rationale as Constantine had for Christianity in the Roman Empire, had the separation of church and state clarified in the U.S. Constitution.

Ecclesiastical bodies posed a problem in Europe but to avoid repeating a mistake, the U.S. threw the bath water without much provision for the baby. Religion serves to rehearse the dramaturgy of life’s meaning and significance; America left that in the region of individual conscience. Beliefs replaced liturgy, elevated by the Cartesian dictum of “I think, therefore, I am.”  It did serve the function of moving religious battles out of the shooting fields to the pulpits and the podia of public debates. 

Bereft of dramaturgical commonality, the United States government replaced it with legal holidays. The Chamber of Commerce made Christmas a consumer fest, and Hallmark sanctified Thanksgiving along with other commemorative occasions all the way from mothers/fathers’ day to the recognition of office administrative assistants. 

The Fourth of July thus comes closest to being a “religious” ritual of the American covenant and communion freighting the national understanding of its raison d’etre—of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The American revolt managed to shake off Brit George’s sovereign rule to tax his subjects to pay for his war expenses. That his war happened to be against France is ironic since Paul Revere, the crier hero of the revolution, was half French. 

It became clear after the ragtag army of Virginian George sent the Red Coats back to Piccadilly that building a nation, let alone, running it, took some doing. The easy way out was to offer George W kingship of the new state. His intelligence overrode his ego, wisely declined, and left his name to later identify one of the nation’s illustrious universities. 

Columbian trade made lots of silver on the back of black slaves from the West Coast of Africa, particularly in the sugar and cotton fields. John Hancock of the well-known signature and head of the First Continental Congress inherited his uncle’s wealth earned smuggling. JFK’s dad was reputed to have done the same with rum during Prohibition.  That is not totally un-American; after all, we label Phillip Morris today as a company with a social conscience!  Tobacco and cotton were grown in the South on the forced labor of Sambo, Uncle Rufus, and Aunt Jemima.

American enterprise worships at the altar of the mighty buck, and at its inception, Wall Street’s buccaneers and privateers understood the speculative value of real estate and its endless supply west of the Mississippi, so it did not take long before the railroad barons exploited cheap Chinese labor from the Gold Rush and laid rails from coast to coast. The Exclusion Act against the “yellow fever” later established immigrations’ legal frame. 

The Fourth of July is a beacon of hope embodying the Puritan’s understanding of American exceptionalism, “the light upon the hill,” adding “manifest destiny” when McKinley went down on his knees with Methodist missionaries heading for the Philippines to educate, civilize, and evangelize the poor natives. 

Earlier, the third French Republic and the Portuguese, in a spurt of liberal impulse, took colonizing the world as a “mission to civilize.” With the allure of the eastern Asian tiger about to be roasted and carved out by the European powers, the U.S. saw no problem in forcibly donning the lei of Aloha by ousting Hawaii’s monarchy, buying Guam and the Philippines from Spain, and joined in feasting on the imperial table amidst the Qing’s Queue and Qi Pao. 

Western hubris intervened when France avenged its humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War. Austro-Hungary was humbled at the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the Great War 1914-18, and resentful Austrian corporal Aryan Adolf Hitler rose up to play the Great War games one more time. It was in these theatres that the Fourth of July added to its rationale of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny the “sacred service and sacrifice of our soldiers”, a theme drummed loudly in many quarters today. 

During 1976 bicentennial, colleagues extended the dynamic of broadening community participation in the political process to other societies around the world. My domains were Town Meeting USA, Community Forum Canada, and Community Forum Philippines. At the time, we were riding on the theme of a new declaration of global interdependence, way before Earth summits were held and the Earth charter written.  

China’s traditional input of fireworks to our celebrations will be missed in many states this year, but the reverse is true, presence of McDonald-KFC-Pizza Hut in many of China city’s street corners make them look like Chinatown USA. 

More profoundly, we watched President Hu Jintao admonish members of the CPC, the country’s ruling political party, on its 90th year anniversary Friday,  to weed out corruption from government and to establish the integrity of public service especially among the young in broadening political engagement and participation, a theme that sounded more like one given down Main St. on the fourth of July.

The Fourth of July is emerging in places sans USPS zip codes. How is it celebrated in your part of the glocal village?  I am pulling out the old “America the Beautiful” song, and in the spirit of making the old new, and the new holy, sing the last line of verses one and four replacing “brotherhood” with: “And crown thy good with earthlihood/planethood.” 

Happy Interdependence Day!