Every year on this day we are reminded of the significance of our independence.  We are told the timeless story of 56 men who pledged their lives and sacred honor, knowing they would be hung as traitors for daring to believe that they could be free men.  The story of American independence is one that for many of us, embodies all that we believe about our nation and about ourselves.  It fills us with pride, with hope, with love for our country.

This post is not a retelling of that story.

Instead, I’d like to direct your attention to our present.  After two hundred and thirty-eight years, what have we done with our independence?  Have we guarded with jealous attention the jewel of liberty, as Patrick Henry admonished us?  Have we remembered that “patriotism is as much a virtue as justice,” as Benjamin Rush reminded us?  Have we all studied politics and war, as John Adams did, to protect our children’s freedom to study mathematics and philosophy? Above all, have we remained mindful as a collective nation that “those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it,” as Thomas Paine warned us?  

Back then only 3% of the colonists took up arms against the tyrannical English government.  Now, do we even have that many people willing to stand up? In order to understand the price of freedom, to understand the grave and critical responsibility that we have as guardians of our own liberty, we must be educated about history, about conflict and truth and character.  We must understand the events that led up to that fateful decision made by those 56 men.  We must know about a lot more than celebrities and athletes and fashion and the price of weed in our area.  Unfortunately, we are far, far behind both our allies and our enemies in all of that and more.

In this country, 14% of American adults cannot read.  Another 21% read at a 5th grade level.  Even more staggering is that 19% of the high school graduates each year cannot read, adding to the total number of illiterate.  How can we claim that we “study politics and war” when as a nation, so many of our citizens cannot even read English (not even counting the millions of illegals in this country who will never learn English)?  And what of those who can?  A 2004 study found that half of all American adults between 18 and 44 do not read books for pleasure.  As a result, “reading comprehension skills are eroding.”  As Twain pointed out, “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”  An uneducated man is an easily enslaved one, and we see this all over today in the hordes of goverment-dependent, in the shallow masses who subscribe to empty liberal philosophies and childlike emotionalism, in the absolute lack of critical thinking skills among our fellow Americans.

As a nation, we are horribly undereducated in all of the areas that matter.  I’m not even talking about knowing the capitals of obscure third world countries, I’m talking about knowing how the United States came to be; her faults and her strengths, the character of the men who gave their all so that we could live in liberty.  We claim to be grateful and thankful but are we?  So many Americans don’t know enough to be grateful.  The really horrifying part is, we don’t even care.

And where is our courage?  When did the traits of bravery and integrity get so perverted that we actually expect and accept lies and corruption from our own elected officials?  When did American exceptionalism become a dirty concept to be ridiculed and mocked?  When did being a patriot become synonymous with terrorism?  The answer is simple: We let this happen.  We have lounged in the water, ignoring the temperature as it rose.  We watched, docile and compliant, as our liberty was taken from us one piece at a time, by presidents and Congresses led by both sides of the aisle.  Uneducated and shallow, we believed what we were told.  It’s to keep you safe.  It’s for your own good.  As a nation, we don’t know any better.  In fact, we have learned through decades of slow, steady indoctrination to mistrust those who call on us to stand up for freedom.  We have learned to ridicule them, to call them racists.  We have even learned that maybe perhaps it would be better if all of those people weren’t in our society.  It has gotten so bad that for those few of us who get it, the idea that we could be arrested and imprisoned by our own government—for nothing more than believing in and acting in the cause of liberty—is a sickening knowledge that sits in the pit of our stomach every single day.

The state of our society is pathetic, the flame of liberty is dying in the blackness of tyranny, and yet we do nothing.  We have a president hell-bent on the destruction of all that was intended with that first document, a Congress who by-and-large has no intention of stopping him, and a Supreme Court that can only be trusted to uphold the Constitutional intent about half the time.  We are under surveillance everywhere we go, our every move and purchase cataloged and saved.  We are taxed to insanity to pay for gluttonous and ill-conceived programs that should not even exist.  We are told what we can grow, where we can grow it, and whether we can eat it.  Our food is contaminated, our water impure, our children overmedicated.  In every single facet of your life, there is government influence and control.  It’s so prevalent that we don’t even pay attention to it anymore.  And yet every year we get together on July 4th and praise the idea of “independence” like we have a clue what that actually was intended to mean.

I love my nation.  I love her history, her heroes, her ideals.  The idea that I could be called upon at some point to give my life in defense of what she stands for is something I have long accepted, and would consider the greatest honor.  This post is not a condemnation of America.  It is, however, a call to action, a call to truth. It is because I do love my nation so much, because I value so deeply the sacrifices made, that I stand here and say that we should demand better of ourselves.  We must demand better.

Today, of all days, we should not be celebrating. In fact, for us to celebrate today with the things that we have allowed to flourish in our society and our government, is an insult to every one of those 56 men who put their names on a document they knew could result in their death.  We should be ashamed of ourselves, for we have squandered the priceless, blood-stained gift that was given to us.  We have loved wealth better than liberty, and security more than freedom.  We have allowed ourselves to become complacent to the point that we think clicking the “share” button counts as fighting for the cause of liberty.

John Adams said that liberty must at be supported at all hazards.  That means no matter what it costs us, no matter what it requires of us. Those who came before us understood that, and they rose with their blood to meet that challenge.  Have we?  Thomas Paine said that “what we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”  Those of us who have been born into freedom have no clue as to what it is truly worth…but we are finding out.

As George Washington wrote on the eve of changing history forever:

Our own Country’s Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions — The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny mediated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world, that a free man contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

That is what we come from.  That is what once burned in the hearts of men who called themselves Americans.  Patriotism is not a dirty word.  It is not a shameful thing to be hidden away or kept only on a Facebook page so you don’t offend anyone.  Being an American demands certain things.  It requires things.  It demands vigilance and courage.  It demands that we never forget, certainly—but even more, it demands that we do what it takes to keep it.  We have failed, and our children and grandchildren will pay the ultimate price for our complacence if we do not change our course.  It may even be too late already.

This 4th of July, instead of cheering about the independence our countrymen once had the intestinal fortitude to actually fight for, think about what you’re going to do this year to get yours back.

My God!  How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!  ~Thomas Jefferson