Born on the Fourth of July
By Dana R Pico Posted in User Blogs — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Today we celebrate the declaration of our independence as a nation. July 4, 1776 was, of course, not the real date of our independence: that took another five years, until Lord Cornwallis surrendered his forces at Yorktown, Virginia, which pushed the British Prime Minister, Lord North, to resign, and his successors decided that it wasn't worthwhile to continue to press the war to subjugate the American colonies, and negotiations were begun for the Treaty of Paris. The Treaty of Paris was the formal recognition by Great Britain that the United States were independent.
We could, I suppose, date our real independence from the surrender at Yorktown (would that be October 17, 1781 when Lord Cornwallis offered to surrender, or October 19, 1781, when he actually signed the surrender document?), or the signing of the Treaty of Paris (September 3, 1783), or the dates of ratification of the Treaty (January 14, 1784 by the Continental Congress or April 9, 1784, by the British Parliament) or the date of the exchange of ratifications (May 12, 1784).
But we don't. We date our independence from July 4, 1776, because that was when we declared it to be so, not from when the British deigned to consent.
And that has a real importance: we were a new nation, "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," as President Lincoln put it four score and seven years later. We had declared ourselves to be a new nation, a new people; we were no longer Englishmen, we were Americans.
Even our name was expansive, especially when you consider that, in 1776, we occupied only a small slice of a great continent. We were Americans, naming ourselves after the whole of the Western Hemisphere, after two continents. Our neighbors to the north are Canadians, called thus after their country; our neighbors to the south are Mexicans or Hondurans or Brazilians or Argentines, all called thus after their countries. But it is we who are named after our land and our continent, a land and continent much larger than our country when we first became independent. It is as though what was eventually to be called our Manifest Destiny, "to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us,[1]" was recognized even by those few million Americans living mainly within a hundred miles of the Atlantic shoreline.
That was a time in which we were proud to be Americans. And for most of us today, especially on this day, we are still proud to be Americans.
Unfortunately, the phrase "for most of us" does not mean for all of us. There was an article in the June 2005 issue of The Progressive by Howard Zinn, The Scourge of Nationalism. For Dr. Zinn, a radical left activist, nationalism, a feeling of pride and belonging to a community, is "one of the great evils of our time."[2]
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica, and many more). But in a nation like ours--huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction--what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.
For Dr. Zinn, apparently, there is nothing wrong with nationalism -- if you are Swiss. It is only if you are an American that something becomes wrong with it!
Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.
Well, yes, actually. We have brought civilization and liberty and democracy to other parts of the world. It was not the Japanese who wrote their constitution, guaranteeing the rights of women and outlawing war; that was General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, who imposed it on them following their defeat in a war of aggression that they began. It was not the free choice of the Germans to have a free and democratic society, with liberty for all; they had used the democracy given them under the Weimar Republic to elect Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, an antidemocratic and expansionist movement. The United States led the occupation of the western portion of Germany following the war, and it was the democratic ideals of the United States which led the Germans into a stable democracy.
And it was the United States which most fiercely resisted the antidemocratic, totalitarian forces of Communism, finally halting Soviet expansionism in Nicaragua and Angola and Afghanistan, to put such stress on the dictators of the Soviet Union that the internal pressures of democratic desires were able to bring down what President Reagan rightly called an "evil empire."
It was our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence," an American journalist declared on the eve of the Mexican War. After the invasion of Mexico began, the New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."
As we look to our southern borders, and the observations of the Minutemen trying to help the Border Patrol keep out illegal immigrants crossing over from Mexico, we can see the price we have paid for not having "civilize(d) that beautiful country." We see Mexicans, possibly the hardest working people in the world, willing to do hard and dirty jobs for small compensation, fleeing the land of their birth, of their families and of their language, for a life in the United States.
It was the actions of the Minutemen that concentrated the thoughts of Dr. Zinn on nationalism.
I cannot get out of my mind the recent news photos of ordinary Americans sitting on chairs, guns on laps, standing unofficial guard on the Arizona border, to make sure no Mexicans cross over into the United States. There was something horrifying in the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call "civilization," we have carved up what we claim is one world into 200 artificially created entities we call "nations" and armed to apprehend or kill anyone who crosses a boundary.
I have to wonder how an educated American (he holds a doctorate from Columbia), reared in a working-class family in Brooklyn, a veteran of World War II, and the beneficiary of the best that American life can offer (he has been much more financially successful than his parents) can be so blind that he cannot see what is right before his eyes. He decries nationalism, especially in its American manifestation, while looking at poor people willing to sacrifice their native lands and families, and risk imprisonment, deportation or death in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, to become Americans!
- Far
We've been traveling far
Without a home
But not without a star
Free
Only want to be free
We huddle close
Hang on to a dream
On the boats and on the planes
They're coming to America
Never looking back again
They're coming to America
Home,
Don't it seem so far away
Oh, we're traveling light today
In the eye of the storm
In the eye of the storm
Home,
to a new and a shiny place
Make our bed, and we'll say our grace
Freedom's light burning warm
Freedom's light burning warm
Everywhere around the world
They're coming to America
Every time that flag's unfurled
They're coming to America
Got a dream to take them there
They're coming to America
Got a dream they've come to share
They're coming to America
They're coming to America
They're coming to America
They're coming to America
They're coming to America
Today, today, today, today, today
My country 'tis of thee
Today
Sweet land of liberty
Today
Of thee I sing
Today
Of thee I sing
Today!
--- Neil Diamond, "They're Coming to America."
We can debate the problems of immigration, especially illegal immigration, all day long. Unlike most conservatives (and not a few liberals), I have taken the position that we have illegal immigration in the United States because we want illegal immigration in the United States. And even if one contends that most immigrants are coming here for economic opportunity rather than Mr. Diamond's "Freedom's light burning warm," then they are coming for the same opportunity that enabled Dr. Zinn to move from a working-class family in Brooklyn to a professorship at Boston University. But, regardless of their motivations, political or economic, they have seen the United States as the land of opportunity. If Dr. Zinn doesn't like the notion that Americans "(have) been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world," the fact is that people who aren't Americans have also seen "our nation as different from others, an exception in the world."
How many times have we heard Bush and Rumsfeld talk to the troops in Iraq, victims themselves, but also perpetrators of the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, telling them that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy"?
Well, they have. Iraq isn't over yet, and maybe, just maybe, it will turn out badly. But for a man like Dr. Zinn, born in the United States, and a man who has been free to travel the world and teach in foreign lands, a man who has benefited from the freedom and democracy of the West, not to be able to see the bitterness and brutality and death that the reign of Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party created, is obtuseness of an amazing order.
The Iraqis have had democracy, demonstrated in free elections, in which a remarkable percentage of the population participated under the threat of chaos and death from the insurgents. And it has been the American soldier, with American values, led by American leaders, whose decisions were ratified by the American people, which have given the Iraqi people the first moments of freedom and democracy. That so many Americans like Dr. Zinn, fortunately still a minority, cannot see that yes, the United States is exceptional, and yes, the United States is something different and better in the world, is both amazing and appalling.
______
[1] - John Louis O'Sullivan, journalist from New York and editor and founder of United States Magazine and Democratic Review.
[2] - Howard Zinn, "The Scourge of Nationalism," The Progressive, June 2005
Also published on my site Common Sense Political Thought under Born on the Fourth of July.
. . . that these people want to become Americans? Maybe because they are risking life and limb to stop being Mexicans, I suppose.
The Mexican immigrants are different from the previous waves of immigration we have seen, because the ability to go back and forth between the Old Country and the United States exists for them in ways it did not for the European immigrants of decades ago. Add to that the ability to communicate with their friends and family remaining in Mexico, and they retain ties to their old homes that previous immigrants did not.
I'd guess that the real truth is that they'd like to be both Americans and Mexicans; Americans because they have a chance to escape poverty here, and Mexicans, because that is their cultural heritage. I don't think we've figured out how to deal with that concept yet.
I can't help but quibble with one bit though:
"He decries nationalism, especially in its American manifestation, while looking at poor people willing to sacrifice their native lands and families, and risk imprisonment, deportation or death in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, to become Americans!"
Why should we believe these people crossing the desert want to be illegal aliens, given that they refuse to assimilate into our culture, break our laws (our system of government being what DEFINES America after all), and wave Mexican flags at every opportunity?
that while we all are familiar with the beginning of the Declaration of Independence...I would refer people to the LAST line:
"We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
This was no mere rhetoric! The signers were signing their own death warrants if they were unsuccessful in achieving Independence.
Likewise, the courageous people of Afghanistan and Iraq, who have undertaken to emulate the United States in embracing freedom...they are betting their lives that democracy CAN succeed in their nations.
As the descendents of our own great forefathers, we owe it to the poeple of those fledgling democracies to NOT allow the enemies of freedom to win!
between nationalism and patriotism. The latter is local, insular, traditionalist, the expression of one's love for one's place and people. Nationalism is abstract, expansionist, and expresses itself through the vicissitudes of the state.
Howard Zinn, of course, has no use for either.
I meant to ask ""Why should we believe these people... want to be AMERICANS," sorry.
". . . that these people want to become Americans? Maybe because they are risking life and limb to stop being Mexicans, I suppose."
We know they're risking their lives to come work in America, but that isn't the same as coming here to become Americans.