The 4th of July

Yes, yes, yes, it is that time again. Break out the BBQ, fire up the coals, get ready for the fireworks ... it's time to celebrate. This is a big day for Americans, that's for sure, but what is it exactly they are celebrating? This is not a question that just sprang to mind. I've been asking it for most of my life. Most Americans will tell you, it was on July 4, 1776 that America declared its independence from Britain and became a new nation (though it took a war and 13 more years to establish that fact), signaling a new era in the development of the nation-state and enshrining freedom and liberty as the hallmarks of this new phase of existence.

Now, I really don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but right here at the outset, I find myself confused. Historians agree that the Peace of Westphalia (1648) marks the birth of the modern nation-state. The USA certainly wasn't the first, and as we have seen over the course of the last 366 years, nation-states come and go. Just ask Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, if you don't believe me. There are older people in the Czech Republic who have had three different nationalities in their lifetime and they've never left their village. Just what kind of a role does the nation really play in our lives?

And how is it that these people -- or any of us for that matter -- become citizens? I have an American passport because I was born there. How did I come to be born there? The luck of the draw. There is no rational reason why I couldn't have been born in Sub-Saharan Africa or in China or Tibet, or on some Lapp island above the Artic Circle. We place absolutely no value on chance or coincidence in any other aspect of our lives, but when it comes to which passport you can get, one's place of birth is a really big deal. A mere chance event has everything to say about one's loyalties, one's obligations, and one's commitments. Why is it only applicable in this case?

OK, maybe it's about the ideas of Freedom and Liberty. Well, back there in 1776, only white, male property owners were free. There was still indentured servitude; women were chattel; slavery was not only legal but acceptable, and we were on the threshold of carrying out the systematic and ruthless genocide of all those people who were there before the Europeans came to "settle this savage land". What does freedom and liberty mean to these people? And, how free is a country with a concentration camp in Guantanamo where they can send their own citizens without due process (provisions of the NDAA)? How free is a country which brutally suppresses peace demonstrations (cf. reaction to the Occupy movement)? How free is a country that spies upon and collects data on its citizenry for no other reason than they they can? How free is a country that enslaves its more fortunate young people with life-long debt and which denies opportunites to its less fortunate (read: poor) youth? How free is a country that blatantly expects more for itself than for any other country (say, like Iraq)?

Don't get me wrong: I love holidays as much as the next fellow, maybe even more. I love celebrating and having a good time and being able to spend quality time with family and friends. You will have to excuse me, however, if I don't get all choked up and teary-eyed. I'm saving that for such a time that the USA (or any other country, for that matter) actually makes an honest attempt to live up to the ideals they claim to hold so highly. If you want me on your side, walk the walk, don't just talk the talk.