wrr: independence day

Rahul Mahajan, writing three years ago in Counterpunch, observes that “ The question of how a movement for social justice deals with symbols like the Fourth of July or like the flag has always been a controversial one. At the height of the Vietnam War,” he notes, “when some were advocating burning the flag, others said we should wash it instead, try to reclaim the symbol instead of repudiate it.”

Mike Whitney takes the former approach, in a recent essay on dissidentvoice.org, titled “Show Your Independence on the 4th -- Burn a Flag.” He writes, “It’s odd that Congress would pass a bill banning flag burning on the same week that reports confirmed the US military used napalm in Iraq. Apparently, it’s alright to incinerate Iraqis, but not okay to burn a 5’x7’ piece of tri-colored cloth. For the Republican faithful, the action was just another cynical demonstration of feigned patriotism meant to divert attention from an increasingly bloody war.”

Mahajan further suggessts the Fourth of July myth not only diverts attention from the war but masks it by being its reverse. In the standard version of the American Revolution, Mahajan writes, “a small, relatively powerless band of American colonists took on a mighty empire that was on its way to ruling much of the world. It was a lopsided contest that the colonists won because they were fighting for their own freedom. . . . . Now, however, . . .America is the empire. It is the one in all history that has had the most control over the internal politics of the largest number of other countries.”

As Medea Benjamin puts it in her essay “Celebrating Independencein the Era of Empire,” posted yesterday to commondreams.org, “Our nation was founded on a determination to be free of domination by the British empire. The US Declaration of Independence proclaimed the need to fight the War of Independence against Britain because King George III had “kept among us standing armies” that committed intolerable “abuses and usurpations.” Today it is our government whose standing army is committing abuses and usurpations in foreign lands. Today it is our government that is in the business of empire-building. Even before 9/11, the US military maintained over 700 foreign military bases and installations and almost 250,000 troops in 130 countries.”

Mahajan further observes that, “The continued celebration of the Fourth, with its constant invocation of our founding, explicitly keeps us from coming to terms with [the nation’s current] role. . . .we can continue to believe that we are a force for freedom in the world only by refusing to come to terms with our actions.”

“The national mythology that keeps us in this mindset requires constant reinforcement. The Fourth, in the way it is typically celebrated, is an important part of that, helping to foster the historical amnesia that is so necessary to keep a populace befuddled and vulnerable to the manipulations of those in power.”

The historical amnesia Mahajan points to also applies to how we tell the 1776 story. Norman Solomon, in an essay on commondreams.org titled “Mourn on the Fourth of July,” points out that “Back in 1776, all the flowery oratory about freedom did nothing for black slaves, women, indentured servants or Native Americans.”

Citing political scientitst Michael Parenti, Solomon notes that “Most of the delegates who gathered in Philadelphia to draw up the Constitution were wealthy. And they "were determined that persons of birth and fortune should control the affairs of the nation and check the 'leveling impulses' of the propertyless multitude that composed 'the majority faction.’”

Marcus Raskin also addresses the some of the hypocrisies of the ruling class in an open letter to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, available on TomPaine.com. He writes in response to President Bush's call for Americans “to find a way to thank the men and women defending our freedom.”

Raskin suggests that today “It is hardly surprising that soldiers are praised and veterans' benefits are eviscerated, or that fire fighters and police officers praised for their bravery at the tragedy of 9/11 saw their benefits and raises disappear like the TV commercials that promise, then take away, and then promise again in an infinite series of lies.”

But, he argues, “There is another side to the United States.” Calling for a society based in generosity, economic and social justice, Raskin describes this as “the world of American aspiration and the inner meaning of America's social covenant.”

The reclaiming of the meaning of human equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence has a long tradition. It includes the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments, which rewrote the earlier declaration to state that “all men and women are created equal.”

And it calls to mind a 1938 poem by Langston Hughes,which ends,

 O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--

And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

. . . 

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath--

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain--

All, all the stretch of these great green states--

And make America again!