I would offer that COVID-19 and the cracks and
shortcomings of our healthcare system it’s revealed, to say nothing of the
economic chaos and financial inequity the consequences of the pandemic have precipitated
and exposed to say nothing of our continued and steadfast refusal to confront
our original sin, four centuries of racism, does indeed make this holiday
different but could also make this celebration of one of the world’s most
inspiring documents, our Declaration of Independence, a long-overdue moment of
self-assessment and soul-searching while we map where we should be heading as a
nation.
We’ve traded ‘e Pluribus Unum,’ (from many, one)
to 'what's mine is mine,
but what's yours is
negotiable' even while promising one another over the next few days to think
about those whose service in uniform makes what we call ‘the American Way of
Life’ possible for most, but certainly not all, of us.
There’s a line in the second paragraph in the
Declaration of Independence, right after those self-evident truths, that sets us
apart from every other nation; where we proclaim each of us has “certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness.”
In a perfect world, we should have devoted every
day of the nearly next two hundred and fifty-four years which followed to
expanding the definition of whom exactly had those unalienable rights but along
the way we’ve gotten sidetracked on our journey from the streets of
Philadelphia in the heat of the summer of 1776 to the cities and towns of all sizes seething unhappily across our nation right now.
Quite frankly, unless and until we all share
equally in those unalienable rights of ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness’ we are fooling ourselves. We are the Shining City on the Hill, as
Peggy Noonan once phrased it, for the rest of the world and from this nation’s
birth, people have come from everywhere to live free, proud to be called an ‘American.’
We who have always lived in this society and
enjoyed the protections that our Declaration of Independence promised and that
our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee sometimes are blinded by our own
good fortune and fail to see those among us who have been marginalized, disenfranchised
and deprived of what we’ve told one another is our birthright.
Freedom to be whomever we choose to be and the
happiness and joyfulness as a result of that freedom are intended not only for some
but for all of us. Freedom cannot be reduced or diminished when shared but can only
increase as more of us enjoy its blessing. Always.
Happy Independence Day to each of us and for
all of us as our inheritance as free people.
-bill kenny
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