Independence Day

I love America because we exercise an audacity to mark out unrealistic aspirations, then get to work making them manifest. Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence wrote that "all men are created equal" when such a notion was patently ridiculous in a nation of slavery, a patriarchal culture who granted suffrage and property rights to only certain classes of "men." The statement was radical and not backed up by the facts, but we got to work. Now, we might safely say that no where and at no time have more people been born with more equality and opportunity than on our shores.


John Kennedy moved the finish line to the move after we barely had achieved orbit with a monkey, and we made it. The Cold War was a good motivator, and we won that, too.

We have our fits and starts, of course, constant sin and constant redemption, new problems, new crises and new resolve amid our vigorous, impassioned disagreements. We cling to the Rule of Law, criticize politicians and continue to vote for them.

Martin Luther King preached about the arc of history and how it bends ever, if slowly, toward justice. Here we have two and a third centuries, and we get better and better all the time.

God bless America.