Editorial

—Rollie Atkinson
The Independence Day we celebrate each July 4 — our nation’s
birthday — was set off by a course of events that led to public
protests against taxation without representation and other
tyrannies. Violent acts of revolt and years of war against the King
of England soon followed.
Fifty-six men from America’s 13 colonies joined together in 1776
as a Continental Congress to declare “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.”
At risk of being put to death as traitors and terrorists, these
Founding Fathers asserted their rights to alter and abolish the
rule of the British Crown and to institute a new government “to
affect their Safety and Happiness.”
The Declaration of Independence was ratified over days of
debate, compromises and ultimately with consensus. Men with very
different backgrounds and loyalties were able to agree to a higher
common good to give birth to a democratic nation of free and
independent states.
On this birthday of our nation, we are left to wonder if the
same “firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” and the
mutual pledge to each other’s “Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honor”
could find a winning vote in today’s Halls of Congress under the
dome of our U.S. Capitol.
Our nation and democracy has succeeded, prospered and kindled a
bright beacon of liberty all over the world for 233 years. The
United States of America remains the greatest democracy and
government ever created by man.
Our United States has persevered through a Civil War. We have
defended our democratic principles in two world wars and other
foreign conflicts. We have witnessed and been altered by
revolutionary industrial and technological inventions. Our nation
and its people have endured great social upheavals like the end to
slavery and the bitter Civil Rights battle. Modern cultural
turmoils and shifting values about women’s rights, gay pride and
the sanctity of the unborn have redefined our democracy and
laws.
Our modern democracy has become very different from the one of
our Founding Fathers. At many times it seems too complex to be
governed by a room of selected men and women in faraway Washington,
D.C. Too often our government is influenced by special interests,
rancor and pettiness. Politics and hired politicians have replaced
statesmen and higher principles.
With so many competing and conflicting interests of today’s
society, we must question whether a document called the Declaration
of Independence could win consensus or ratification in these
times.
As we sit under this year’s bursting fireworks and enjoy mid
summer picnics dressed in red, white and blue, we should also
compose a few timely birthday wishes for our embittered government
and wayward democracy.
“Special interests, powerful corporate capital, numbing and
distracting entertainment, general selfishness, and the vagaries of
public communication make effective public deliberation difficult,”
wrote American educator John Dewey almost 70 years ago. “The movie,
cheap reading matter and the motor car have drawn peoples’
attention away from politics.”
We have become a nation of numb passengers, along for the ride
with little sense of direction or value for “unalienable rights.”
Our democracy lacks the populist participation required.
Twitter, Googling and the blurring haze of the Internet are
making democracy dummies out of all of us.
The “self-evident” truths and injustices that stirred Thomas
Jefferson, Adams, Madison and their fellow patriots to declare
independence are lost in a current day blogosphere of
irrelevance.