July 4th, 2020

In recent years, I’ve felt increasingly dissonant about Independence Day. I still hold to idealistic beliefs about the principles this country was founded on, and the patriotic songs and symbols still have power to stir me, even as my realizations of the ways in which this country falls short of its ideals deepen each year. This year especially has brought new understanding of the way that racism carved channels in our history that still affect our present. It has been a year of national reflection and reckoning, perhaps because we have all been quarantined with more time to reflect, leading to an extraordinary pulling down of monuments and symbols once considered venerable, and the consideration of ideas formerly inconceivable. As I put up the flag tomorrow, how can I help but think about the reference to slaves in the less-than-admirable third verse of The Star Spangled Banner or the odious racism of its author, but also of the redeeming fifth verse added during the Civil War. It is fitting that the anthem should be considered amendable like our Constitution, a work in progress like our country itself. Our founders recognized their principles as aspirational when they sought to form a “more perfect union”. And as our country was nearly torn apart, Lincoln, standing among the fresh graves of Gettysburg, called upon us “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced,” and that this nation “shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Seven score and seventeen years later, we still have much unfinished work. It can be discouraging to assess how far we yet fall short of our stated ideals. But it’s worth looking back to see how far we’ve come, and it’s worth looking around to see where we are relative to the rest of the world. As I put the flag up tomorrow, I’ll be thinking of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” and of all the recent protests. But I’ll also be thinking about living in a country where we can have such protests, and where monuments can sometimes be toppled, even as citizens of Hong Kong are losing their freedoms before our eyes, as Uyghurs suffer cultural genocide in China, and as much of the world suffers under dictatorships, oligarchies, and theocracies. It may be tattered, but the banner yet waves.