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On this day last year, I wrote a post expressing my regret and distaste for the Fourth of July also known as Independence Day in the United States.  The celebration of any empire is, to me, to undermine the better qualities of human nature not mention to the rejection of the teachings of Jesus.

To be clear, I still hold those convictions, perhaps even more today than last year given the state of affairs in the US and the climate of the global economy, but that is another matter altogether. However, to associate those convictions with Independence Day is somewhat of misnomer because July 4, 1776 isn’t so much a commemoration of the United States and the celebration of American empire itself as much as it is a commemoration and celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the document on which the United States was founded and the document — along with what is left of the Constitution — from which it dubiously justifies its imperial existence.

So, I will celebrate the fourth of July not because I’m an American nationalist who will rally around the flag, praise the prospects of empire, eat grilled meat, and blow stuff up.  No, I will celebrate the fourth because I want to commemorate the Declaration of Independence and because I want to actually take it seriously.

Just for good measure, let’s take a look a some of the passages of the Declaration.

From the preamble:

“When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.”

Self explanatory.  When a group people sees that they must declare themselves independent from the political entity of which they are currently a part, it makes sense that they would list their reasons.  My question would be this: Were the Founding Fathers the only persons capable of declaring themselves independent or is it time we do that again?

The oft quoted sentence we all remember memorizing in high school:

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Again, pretty self-explanatory:  “…all men — and I would add people — are created equal.”  That may very well be one the most important and revolutionary string of words every written.  And it is no less important now than when Jefferson penned it.  Why then do we not take those five words to heart?  The Founding Fathers sure didn’t.  They were white upper class men who had slaves.  They remedied this revolutionary phrase by declaring Blacks to only be 3/5 a person.  Let’s not forget women.  It wasn’t too long ago that we denied them the right to vote.  Even the original wording of “men” reveals the misogyny.  How about homosexuals?  Can we really tell them they are equal and simultaneously deny them civil rights?  I could go on here and list the terrorist, the Iraqi civilian, the suicide bomber, and people like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussien.  The point is our country was founded on this principle and we’ve distorted it ever since.  All person are created equal. Period.  No qualifiers.

The Declaration continues:

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”

In my opinion this is the most important section of the Declaration and perhaps the most important section of any founding document including the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Two questions must be asked here: 1) Did the Declaration of Independence only apply to the Founding Fathers under the tyranny of Britain or does it transcend that context? and 2) Does our current imperial situation at all resemble that described in the Declaration?

If the answer to those questions is yes as I believe it is, then we have a responsibility to dismantle the empire for the sake of justice and democracy not because we hate America but because we take seriously the principles of which the republic was founded, not theocracy but dissent and freedom.  Perhaps all the warmongers and so-called patriots who celebrate American imperialism and exceptionalism on the fourth of July should become better students of their own history.

So, I celebrate the fourth of July not as a zealous nationalist, but as a fervently indignant dissident who believes in the Declaration of Independence and the power of the words and ideas it espouses.  Indeed, it was Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, who said that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

In light of that, Happy Independence Day.

Viva la Revolucion!