Not long ago, a teacher I work with as an English as a Second Language volunteer asked the class if, like us, their home countries had an independence day. They all did, but it seemed to me that independence from a colonizer hadn’t led to happily ever after. If their countries had flourished after gaining independence, I doubt any of them would have ended up in the USA.
It made me ask myself whether I could identify my own opinions on the building blocks of a successful country. Our recent national introspection has helped. We are looking closer at our history and asking ourselves if it’s really true we’re the only ones on the planet without a stain on our national character. Of course not.
One Glorious Fourth at the Robbins House, a freed slave’s preserved home in my town, I got to hear the whole Declaration of Independence read aloud, and I winced about items I hadn’t remembered, such as the wording about King George using the local “savages” against the colonists. Even more revelatory that day was a reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” (Read it here.)
So what makes a country that lives up to its ideals after independence? For starters, I’d say that all adults vote. The corollary to that is that everyone gets a good education so their votes will be informed and based on facts.
Then there are a few things we managed to get into our constitution, things that need to be eternally protected, like the right to free speech and the freedom of the press — to uncover government corruption, for example. There needs to be a structure that enables local resources to be used for good jobs so that people can have homes and other requirements met. There needs to be a fair system of justice in which wrongs are righted as much as possible.
When I think of ESL students from, say, Guatemala, I know that a country’s resources are not always used fairly for all the people. If that were so, those students wouldn’t have become immigrants. The resources have continued to be plundered after “independence,” the government is corrupt, the press is not allowed to say so, and gangs fight everyone over the little that is left.
My knowledge of these things is not deep, but off the cuff, that’s how see what a country needs to be a successful democracy, and I’m hoping you will add some of the important things I’m sure I’ve forgotten. I wonder if we began to think of this holiday as Independence and Introspection Day, we might move a little closer every year to our ideals.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
An Introspection Day would be such a wonderful change, I think…
We could still celebrate the good things but just think about ways to keep moving toward our ideals.
I like the train of thought you have started pulling out of the station. We didn’t start out perfect, but our Declaration and the Revolution were a step in a right direction. The Civil War was another that we were lucky to pull off, Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” was a step back, and Trump’s administration was another stumble. When do we get another Andrew Carnegie who uses his enormous wealth to build libraries all over the country to broaden education for all?
Thanks so much for these thoughts, Earle! I’ll just say that if we had equitable taxation, we wouldn’t need philanthropists to give us amenities like libraries.
Wonderful post. I wholeheartedly embrace the idea of a day of introspection about our country’s past and future direction.
Education is extremely important. Our founding fathers absolutely understood this. They didn’t want to give uneducated people the right to vote. Life has become much more complicated since.
We have freedom of speech and freedom of the press but this allows large “news” organizations to print and broadcast exaggerated claims and blatant misinformation. Large segments of our society are devouring this stuff, fueled by a steady stream of misplaced rage and indignation.
Social media doesn’t seem to be helping the situation. We absolutely need to reflect on these issues and work in ways to find common ground so that we can move forward in a somewhat bipartisan fashion.
If our founding fathers were here today to see what’s going on. I think they’d make massive changes to their original vision of governance.
I certainly don’t have the answers either. A first step is making sure people recognize the problems that we’re up against.
Introspection, reflection, thinking things through: who can object to that?
I think your off-the-cuff observations are spot on!
The steps being taken to curb voting really worry me.
Oh, same!
Right on Caroline. Thank you!
Thanks, Caroline. (I love knowing that you see these posts.)
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