Sure, I know we all equate July 4th with a nice 3 day weekend in the middle of the summer. But I want to take 2 minutes to reflect on exactly what we are celebrating. Now, I don’t know what really happened 200-300 years ago, but I’ll try to remember what my history teachers told me.
Sometime in the 1600’s, we were all living in England. And then some of our friends and neighbors decided they had had enough of religious oppression. So they hopped on boats like the Mayflower and headed to the new “colonies” in America.
Eventually, enough of us moved over here that we developed some sort of free market up and down the Eastern seaboard. And we must have been doing pretty well developing new products, exporting new crops and creating a nice sustainable economy that didn’t require subsidies or loans. Because the guys back in England said, “You guys are really showing success. We need to raise taxes on you so we can spread that money around over here.”
Eventually, we got tired of a bunch of professional politicians and lifelong royalty-types telling us what to do. We were sick of a government that reached out too far, who taxed us too much, and who got involved with things they had no expertise or knowledge about, passing arcane laws that made no sense.
So, as one big group we denounced our relationship with the oppressors. We announced independence, and developed a loose government in which the colonies – now called states – would govern themselves. The national government would pretty much be in charge of monitoring interstate commerce and running a national defense made up of all the state militias. But at the core of the idea, was that we would govern ourselves in a manageable, state by state way. We’d be responsible for our own welfare, and only rely on the federal government to arbitrate disputes and manage a defense – where if you attacked one of us, you attacked all of us.
Obviously times have changed and we’re in a more complex world now. But every Independence Day, I like to reflect back and remember what our whole country was based on. I wonder how many ways we’ve deviated from the original plan, and whether that’s a good or bad thing.
