He hears fireworks and finds deliverance

By PETER BERGER
I almost didn’t watch the fireworks last week. I didn’t want to drag myself off the couch.

Back in 1776 John Adams forecasted fireworks. He predicted our “Day of Deliverance” would be “celebrated by succeeding generations” with thanksgiving to God, parades, and “bonfires and illuminations.” He didn’t forecast an easy time getting there. George Washington’s army was on the verge of being booted out of New York and chased across New Jersey, but the man who couldn’t know he would be our second President wrote that “posterity will triumph” in the new nation, even if he didn’t live to see it. Despite the “toil and blood and treasure” it would cost, that end was “more than worth all the means.”

And I couldn’t get off the couch.

I’m not proposing a litmus test for patriotism. There’s nothing sacred about fireworks. They do serve, however, as a remembrance. We humans are a forgetful people. The Sabbath, Passover, communion, and Islam’s detailed observances were instituted to remind us of spiritual fundamentals. Our national holidays often serve the same memorial purpose. Except how many Americans realize the Fourth of July marks our nation’s birth? How many fewer can connect it with the Declaration of Independence? And what fraction actually knows what that Declaration says?

Too few of us are familiar with its self-evident truths. Most of us have heard somewhere that all men are created equal. Some may know we’re equal in the possession of certain unalienable rights, including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But the Declaration, composed to explain why we were parting from our king, declares that a government exists to protect its people’s rights. If it fails in that responsibility, the people can and should abolish and replace it.

The Declaration catalogs examples of British tyranny, but despite its failings, Britain’s eighteenth century government, guided by Magna Carta and England’s Bill of Rights, was a model of enlightenment in its day, and by comparison with many present regimes remains so even today. Many peoples have been treated far worse than we were by Britain. Many subjects have rebelled against their masters. But the idea that governments exist by consent of the governed in order to protect their rights was the big new thing.

Patriots, including Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, weren’t looking simply to transfer the seat of government from London to Philadelphia. They were seeking a limited government that would intrude as little as was practicable in its citizens’ lives while effectively safeguarding their rights. The Constitution was their genius effort to design such a government that would “secure the blessings of liberty” for them and the generations that followed, meaning us.

When I watch the rockets’ red glare, I think about the nation and government Mr. Adams expected me to be celebrating. He and his friend — and sometime adversary — Mr. Jefferson agreed that government was the protector of the people’s rights. Today many of us see it instead as a provider of services. Far more than in President Kennedy’s day, we’re excessively interested in what our government can do for us.

Maintaining a government strong enough to do its job that doesn’t interfere unduly in its citizens’ lives is a delicate balancing act we haven’t always gotten right. That’s why the most common complaint about government is, “That’s none of the government’s business,” and the other most common complaint is, “The government should take care of that.”

This isn’t a Republican, Democratic, “Tea Party,” or progressive issue. All four contingents complain in turn about what the government does do that it shouldn’t and doesn’t do that it should. The Constitution, with all its brilliance, can’t change the fact that government at its best will always be both flawed and necessary.

It also can’t change the fact that the Constitution is a piece of paper. It lives in the minds, hearts, and consciences of its citizens and the leaders those citizens elect to represent them. It has no power of its own, except that it can testify against us if history one day records that we betrayed it.

That betrayal doesn’t manifest itself solely or even primarily in words, though if citizens have an obligation to know what the Constitution says, a President’s ignorance is inexcusable. That betrayal comes more in our deeds. It resides in our myopic folly when we place partisan advantage and agendas above the national good. It resides in our cowardice when we fail to stand for what we know is right. It resides in our avarice for personal power and benefit.

Betrayal resides in willful lies advanced in the name of Truth.

Betrayal resides in leaders who beguile the people. It would be better for those leaders if a millstone were hung about their necks.

Betrayal resides in citizens who believe those leaders and ignore the voice of their own better angels. Those who refuse to see through transparent lies are as culpable as the liar.

We need to beware abandoning the principled intentions of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson and adopting in their place the dictates and deceit of a leader we wouldn’t want our children to emulate.

We need to restore decency and compromise to government.

We need to rededicate ourselves to the cause and purpose to which our Founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Let our honor be sacred, too. 

Peter Berger taught English and history at Weathersfield School. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.