Be thankful for your independence

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, July 5, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Happy Fourth of July.

I know I am a day late, but celebrating the birth of the United States is not and should not be a one-day affair. We can, at least, take a weekend once a year to focus on the birth of our nation and the courage, good sense, intelligence and recklessness that those who risked everything for us exemplified.

What I always first focus on — which may be the last thing most Americans resort to, if they even know about it — is the Declaration of Independence.

When I was in high school, or it could have been junior high school, memorizing the preamble of the Declaration was required. Not only as a citizen but as a student hoping to get a passing grade.

At the risk of boring a few but in the hopes of educating many, I will reprint part of the preamble.

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it ...”

That’s enough for today. I reprinted this much because it should not be lost on any of us that there are people in other countries who are struggling — without having ever heard of our declaration and barely understanding the democracy we are privileged to enjoy — to achieve some sense of freedom, often at the risk of great personal harm.

They are trying to throw off the yokes of their own King Georges. How different from Americans are those who aspire to have their votes counted, who struggle for the liberty to assemble peacefully to redress their grievances, and who desire to pursue the kind of happiness that it is hard to argue that all people should not enjoy?

If you don’t yet get my meaning, think for a moment of Iran. Watching the thousands of people, young and old, who are still trying to protest what they believe is a stolen election — at great personal danger and under threat of bodily harm or incarceration — makes me think of what it might have been like in 1776, when groups of colonists met in secret to plan the moment at which they would take to the streets, take up their muskets and take responsibility for their futures.

I realize circumstances seem different, but are they really?

I can just imagine an Englishman in 1775 questioning what those backward, unevolved colonists were even thinking when they criticized the king for overtaxing, overgoverning and overlording against the very nature of their quest to form a new kind of life in the New World.

And Iran isn’t the only place where people are yearning to explore the limits of their own personal beliefs in freedom. If you look at a map of the world on which countries that do not recognize the freedoms and liberties of their citizens are colored in red and those that are mostly free are colored in green, it is abundantly clear that we are seeing far too much red.

So when what little news we get from Tehran shows people still taking to the streets, when the tweets are atwitter with cries for help and support for the movement to remove the religious zealots from the lives of people praying to be free, that’s when we need to think. We need to think about our own celebration, our own flag-waving and our own fireworks celebrating independence — of thought, of ideas, of dreams and of aspirations — and find a way to encourage those who are today in similar shoes to those worn 233 years ago by colonists who sought a better way.

Just as others in this world rooted for the colonists to free themselves from Mother England two centuries ago, so, too, should we be rooting for those who crowd the streets of Tehran to find their own way to liberty.

There is no other message as important this Fourth of July weekend than the one that tells us to appreciate what we have, not just on the Fourth of July, but every day.

•••

Speaking of messages, I was visiting my mother the other day and thought, briefly, about the number of my contemporaries, and others far younger than I, who have died suddenly. My mother is a generation ahead of me, so I took the opportunity to half-jokingly ask her if I ever thanked her properly for being such a wonderful mother to me.

Her reply was quick and to the point, “No.”

That, too, was a simple message. You just can’t say “I love you” and “thank you” enough. At least, not enough for your mother!

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.