Between today and tomorrow, a lot of us will spend a great deal of time cooking raw meat over hot rocks, quaffing malt and barley beverages, or playing whiffle ball in the backyard and just taking it easy. All are equally worthwhile, more or less, and I suspect, crabby people like me to the contrary, those who gave their lives in the course of the wars fought for, in, and by this nation, wouldn't have a problem flipping a burger, draining a cold glass or pitching an inning or two and letting it go at that.
We've all seen the bumper stickers proclaiming 'Freedom isn't Free' to the point where I'm not sure we appreciate fully the meaning of the words, much less the importance of the thought they express. We who've always enjoyed all the protections our Constitution and Bill of Rights provide sometimes take for granted what others elsewhere cannot, in their wildest fantasies, ever imagine. For centuries and generations, everyone everywhere has wanted to come to America in order to be free. Here's a newsflash, they still do.
There's a reason why we have a Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor and nobody else does and it doesn't have anything to do with who gave what to whom as a present. Who we are and what we do is the envy of the world even when we sometimes do inexplicably thoughtless, hateful and hurtful things.
We are the most powerful nation on earth (and in the history of the world) and we are a rare and noble notion that we and we alone should determine who we are, where we live, how we worship and for whom we vote as leaders.
We are the United States of America, not because our cars are faster, our grocery shelves better stocked, our homes prettier, our armed forces more powerful, our hair bouncier, our teeth whiter or our clothes cleaner. We are the sum of all of that and ten thousand other things--the freedom to get up tomorrow morning and move across the street or across the country and never need anyone's permission. The right (some feel it's a duty) to think our elected leaders are cloth-eared clowns who are leading us to ruin (and have been since 1776, I guess).
We have more freedoms we never use than the rest of the world put together, made possible by everyone who has ever been an American ever since there's been an America to be from. George Bernard Shaw once noted "(p)atriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it." But I don't believe we think ourselves superior because I'm not convinced sometimes we think at all.
But if we did, and do, think, then Independence Day might be a good day to think a little harder about who we are and how we're going to pass what we have to our children, and to their children, as our parents did for us.
We're a country whose Founders insisted our birthright included, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Maybe that doesn't make us 'better' than other nations, only different-but at least for this holiday, maybe we can all agree that different is better and sing an American tune in whatever key we choose.
-bill kenny
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