Today is the Fourth of July, the Anniversary of the Founding of our Nation. Most people celebrate with fireworks, barbecues. Here in Minnesota, people chill out on the lake, escaping the heat and humidity with a dip in the water. In many ways, Independence Day has become like Christmas, a day that's become less and less about remembrance and honoring legends, and more and more about the day off and seasonal demarcation.
In just as many ways, what Independence Day was meant to celebrate has become more and more like what Christmas was meant to celebrate. On every other day of the year, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution have become more than historical and legal documents; they have become sacred text. They have become the Bible. One declares the power and vengeance of an angry Lord; the other lays out the foundations and theories of a loving and just Father.
The Old and New Testaments.
Our Founding Fathers have become political gods. Their speech and writing are quoted more than those of other wise men. We see in their actions and minds more than the courage of human beings, but the seeds of superiority. The faces of dead presidents line the side of Mount Rushmore; the monuments rose in Washington so young into the life of our nation.
As time heaves away from the 18th century, as technological innovations make the colonial era appear more similar to the age of antiquity, the Revolution becomes myth. The parable of preachers. Its characters reduced to religious icons of saintliness. Yet the words of the Constitution, the faded ink on yellowing parchment, that becomes scripture. It certainly looks like scripture: old paper and fancy handwritings that no one but experts can decipher.
Why is it that the Constitution, a document written more than two hundred years ago (not on the day of July 4th 1776 that we celebrate, but more than a decade later, yet always forever linked to this earlier birthday), a document written by ordinary men made extra-ordinary by the luck of history and circumstance, by men who didn't even like each other all that much, who nearly crowned a King and squabbled through much of the first years of our Nation and for many more years after that, why should this document be held so sacred?
That we may write amendments and amend amendments is credit to our political and social institutions, and an indication that we are a young and progressing nation with still unrealized potential. Yet already we have those who would wish that we interpret the law only in the literal words of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Because some first-draft proposal originally written by squabbling, egoistical men in 1787, that took two years to go into effect, two more after that to be "perfected" with the first ten Amendments (hey, just like the Ten Commandments, they even rhyme), because this manifesto should know and govern our nation so absolutely in the new millennium.
Are these the same folks who say we should interpret morality by the letter of the Bible? I don't know. I don't have the expertise or authority to say that. I haven't even read enough of the Word of God to know if my analogies are making sense. I only mean to say that sometimes we treat history like religion, and worship historical figures as deities.
My parents grew up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, when history was being made, when its figures were living Gods, when the Cult of Personality of Mao was worshiped in full effect. My mother was fifteen when it all started. She comes from a family of original communists. Those who were shot at and persecuted before communism became trendy. Her brother was born in a jail cell. When the Cultural Revolution started in the mid-sixties, like many other teenagers her age, she went to the streets and danced the Mao dance. Her aunt, who sacrificed her life and marriage for communism, said "We Communist believe in neither gods nor myths. Why do you dance for him like for an idol? He is a man; an important man, but only a man".
But the Chinese people forgot. They forgot that the spirit of the People's Revolution transcends the legends and ambitions of a handful of individuals. They allowed one man's, one party's words to be law, rather than remember that such practice was what brought empires, colonists and despots. In America, we are not yet threatened by despots, but we are threatened by conformity of thought, threatened by the worship rather than understanding of the past.
I think that's a lesson we should all remember. That all the great and evil and good and genius humans in life are only that. Humans. They are no more godly and possess no more super powers than you and I. Their words are NOT scripture. We should respect history and the lessons it teaches us. We should admire the feats and courage of those individuals whose names are remembered, and also of those whose names are forgotten. But we should not allow nostalgia to stall progress, should not allow the past to dictate the future. We should not allow our reverence for our ancestors to stop us from climbing on their shoulders and ultimately standing taller than they ever did.
Happy Independence Day everyone! Let us remember the spirit of the Founding Fathers. Let us reflect on their interesting lives and the interesting actions they took, and the profound effect those actions have left on our society. Let us not be blinded by the religious iconography that has sprung up around their history. Let us not make them False Idols.
