Americans reading this are lucky enough to be alive on the 250th anniversary of their country’s declaration of independence. How independent the United States actually is these days or how much the country remains dedicated to the ideals of the founding is highly debatable.
What is not debatable is that it was the colonies making a break from old Europe and formally beginning a new nation as a distinct people in their own country.
What kind of people?
For America’s 150th anniversary, President Calvin Coolidge said in a speech on July 5, 1926, “In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man – these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals.”
This certainly sounded American enough.
100 years later, what would the celebrated American spirit or ideals have been had Kamala Harris won the 2024 presidential election?
We don’t have to wonder. Mere days after the 247th anniversary of the Declaration in 2023, the Biden-Harris administration launched a “Pride Month” celebration on the South White House lawn complete with a scattering of rainbow flag motifs and a so-called “Pride Progress flag.”
President Joe Biden said at the event, “You’re some of the bravest and most inspiring people I’ve ever known. And I’ve known a lot of good folks.”
It was certainly different from Coolidge.
President Biden added, “You set an example for the nation—and quite frankly for the world.”
Okay. Despite its message of supposed inclusiveness, this display definitely wasn’t for everyone.
The last administration did throw a proper barbeque to honor military families on the actual Fourth three years ago, but the Biden-Harris “pride” celebrations lasted throughout June and July, replete with drag queens and LGBTQ activists, which swallowed up the nation’s actual birthday.
Note, this was then 80-year-old Joe Biden letting his rainbow freak flag fly. There’s no telling what extremes a decades younger, identity-politics-driven President Kamala Harris might have gone to this Fourth of July.
Thankfully we’ll never know.
Donald Trump kicked off the 250th anniversary season with an Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the White House lawn earlier this month, which was certainly a departure from anything a Harris White House would have done. It was a bro-fest that I personally enjoyed, while understanding that it too, in ways very different from “Pride Month,” wasn’t for everyone either.
This week for the actual Fourth holiday we are in the midst of what Trump had advertised as a modern day World’s Fair, a sixteen-day event that hasn’t fared as well as the president might have originally hoped. Despite Trump claiming that it has been packed, many photos shared on social media show sparse crowds at best with people speaking and performing to seemingly empty rooms.
Last Friday, a concert scheduled to celebrate Trump’s “Great American State Fair” was canceled only two hours before rapper Vanilla Ice (Rob Van Winkle) was set to perform.
But Winkle was alone. Other performers originally scheduled, country singer Martina McBride, soul legends The Commodores, Glam metal band Poison frontman and Rock of Love reality TV star Bret Michaels, along with rapper Young MC, had all canceled prior.
Mr. “Ice Ice Baby” was the only holdout. Organizers blamed the last minute cancellation on the weather. Sure.
This spectacle, or attempted one, too, was a long way from the America of Coolidge, and certainly the summer of 1776.
I spent the Fourth of July last year with my brother and his family. A particularly patriotic neighbor, a veteran (many in this suburban South Carolina neighborhood know each other) puts on a fireworks display each year that could rival Disney World, with most in the community contributing financially.
It was a treat for my 12-year-old nephew who ran around with his school friends. My 10-year-old niece didn’t like the loud explosions. My brother cooked chicken and hot dogs on his Green Egg grill in his backyard while his wife prepared the fixins’ in the kitchen. Mom was there too. There were neighborhood kids running to and fro across throughout their house and across the lawn. Adult beverages were had. Memories were made.
Red, white, and blue were more prevalent than rainbow flags or combat rings.
On this 250th birthday of America’s independence, individuals living in countless states, cities, and neighborhoods will give organic and voluntary shape to their nation far beyond the grasp of imposed agendas or presidential ego trips, as Americans long have.
No matter what national chaos or corruption persists, the solace of the backyard prevails.
Especially on the Fourth.
As President Coolidge also observed a century ago, “We are obliged to conclude that the Declaration of Independence represented the movement of a people. It was not, of course, a movement from the top. Revolutions do not come from that direction.”
True revolutions do not. The American revolution didn’t.
And on this special Fourth of July and every, may real American independence never fade.
