July 4 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech titled The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro. Allow me to offer the most famous passage:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
You can read the speech on your own. I want to reflect further.
We now have a Black President. Slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment in 1865. During my lifetime we have lived through a civil rights revolution that has more fully included the descendants of those freed slaves, as well as many others like our President, bearing the blood of Black men and women who never experienced slavery.
Perhaps Douglass's rhetoric seems too fiery - after all there are no slaves, are there? Or are there? After all, regular readers of Daily Kos know from the work of Dengre that too much of our clothing is produced under conditions that approximate slavery in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which like it or not is part of the United States sufficiently to allow the label "Made in the United States" to be affixed to its products.
Maybe it is not slavery per se, but when one cannot change jobs lest one lose medical coverage because of a "pre-existing condition," is not one to some degree in a situation of involuntary servitude?
When one's commitment of military service should have been complete but one is extended under terms of stop loss, or because one's status in the Individual Ready Reserve allows the military to recall you to a war you might oppose, disrupting one's life, does not that approach involuntary servitude?
Perhaps that seems too extreme to you. But that is not the only topic about which Douglass speaks strongly. Consider these words from the passage quoted: a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages - have we not experienced that in the last administration, with the construction of legal memoranda to justify torture, "extraordinary rendition," denying people rights guaranteed under International Law, ratified treaties, Habeas Corpus, the Constitution, military regulations, and statutes of the United States?
Perhaps words from the paragraph immediately before what I have quoted might be relevant. Here is that paragraph:
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
Too late, say you? Those were the words we should have applied in the previous administration? We have a new administration now, and we must give it a chance to right the wrongs, to persuade the Congress it is okay to change policy after policy, to think again about what we CAN do to improve the lives of our people rather than to legislate - or rather, fail to legislate - out of fear, political and personal.
After all, this day should be one to remember the courage of our Founders, who risked so much in their separation from Britain.
True, they did. And the words I remember clearly haunt me as I look at our nation today:
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
our Lives - which were certainly at risk
our Fortunes - they had position, many had wealth, all of which were in jeopardy by their actions
our sacred Honor - to do ought than what was right, regardless of the risk, was something they considered shameful
We still have approaching 50 million Americans without healthcare, but some worry about cost - to whom, the pharmaceutical and insurance companies, the pockets of shareholders, the politicians who benefit politically and personally from the largesse of the companies that profit from our current dysfunctional system?
We are destroying the world in which we live by our wasteful use of its bounty, by poisoning the water, air, and soil - these things jeopardize life, not only of humans but of the other living things visible and invisible to our naked eyes. But some oppose doing the necessary thing because it might cost them money. Where is the honor? How do we measure the lives shortened, impoverished, and lost because some are greedy, others are fearful, and too many are unwilling to risk political careers for the sake of what we know to be true and necessary? How does that compare with those who pledge something far greater, who collectively and mutually pledged to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor?
I fear our nation is in the position of King David. I will ignore a certain Southern governor who misuses the relevant example. Allow me to quote the first 7 verses of Second Samuel Chapter 12, King James version:
And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.
The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds:
But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.
And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man's lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.
And David's anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die:
And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.
And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.
Thou art the man - substitute the United State for David, especially in how we approach the environment, in our arrogance in imposing on other nations what we will not apply to ourselves - consider our willingness to seize people all over the world for crimes against our people and our nation, but our unwillingness to subject our own to similar prosecutions, even under international law. Consider that we have executed people for crimes include failure to exercise appropriate command authority but we refuse to walk up our own chain of command in a similar fashion.
You can on your own rephrase Nathan's parable to apply to our nation. And then his words to us would be Thou are the nation
If we are to honor the Declaration of this day, to which we point as the founding of a new kind of nation, then we need to consider carefully the full contents of that document.
all men are created equal - we still have a problem with that one, justifying different treatment of those we can somehow categorize as "other" be they undocumented aliens, persons somehow not covered by Constitution nor Geneva conventions, within our society convicted of previous crimes however inequitably we apply the criminal law, of a different sexual orientation, of an alien religion, or simply because they are poor (and hence must be lazy?). . .
that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - when we deny to same sex couples much of the pursuit of happiness
We have lived through 8 years of an administration that either forgot or tried to persuade the American people to ignore the part of the Declaration which tells us that to preserve our unalienable rights (which are far more than the three listed governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .
If we are going to go through the exercise of celebrating this day, this 233rd anniversary of a document which is supposed to indicate something quite important, even radical, about the nature of government, then perhaps we ought to try to live up to it fully?
This diary asks what we might learn from Frederick Douglass. In 1852, we still had black slaves. Women by and large lacked rights and protection. Those of Native American ancestry were considered aliens among us, foreigners, even though the land on which we built our nation was by and large taken by force from them without just compensation, even after the passage of the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, a pattern of theft that continued well into the 20th Century.
I am married to a woman who is in part a Mayflower Descendant. Others in her family came later, into the 19th century. The earliest of my ancestors in this nation arrived in 1862, ten years after Douglass gave the fiery speech of which my reading occasions this diary. The most recent arrivals of my direct ancestors arrived in 1907. This nation has been good to my extended family, those who arrive earlier and those somewhat more recent. By the generation before me all were graduating from college, male and female, many with advanced or professional degrees. My generation all grew up middle class, with the benefits of regular food and domicile and access to good public schools. I do not lightly challenge the promise of this country of which I am surely a beneficiary.
But I cannot shut my eyes to the continued inequity. The inequity is not just about medical care. It is about basic nutrition. It is about basic economic fairness. It is about basic political fairness, which still does not exist for far too many of those who live in this nation.
And it is about far more than what we do - or fail to do - for those who live within our borders. It is also what our actions as a people and as a nation do to those in other nations - economically, politically, environmentally.
So what might we learn from Frederick Douglass? I would argue that regardless of how much we might admire some of our leaders, we still must challenge them. We still must challenge our society. We must challenge one another, and thereby challenge ourselves. Is not that part of our commitment similarly to that of the signers? Is not that a pledge of our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor?
If we cannot see that mutual commitment, then do we not risk a devolution into what Hobbes called the war of every man against every other man? Are we not already moving too quickly in that direction with our gated communities, our private security forces, our privatization of so much of what built the middle class from which most of my generation benefited? Most, not all, because of course we never fully realized the dream of the pursuit of happiness for all, and now some move to restrict its possibility for others permanently, by amending state constitutions, by passing statutes to deny basic fairness and equity on the basis of sexual orientation or perhaps the immigration status of one's parents.
In 1852, looking at the promise of the Declaration, Douglass noted
I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary!
One hundred and twenty two years later Barbara Jordan noted of the words with which our Constitution begins, "We, the people" that when they were written
I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."
She also, noting her role as an inquisitor on the House Judiciary Committee, offered this
My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.
I do not claim for myself the fiery righteousness of Frederick Douglass nor the solemn gravitas of Barbara Jordan. But like the former, I cannot remain silent when the promise of the Declaration is not fully extended within our nation. And like the latter, I will not be an idle spectator to the destruction or abandonment of the principles of our governing document.
I am of the opinion expressed by Carl Shurz to the United States Senate in 1872:
My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.
I acknowledge that my perceptions and interpretations are not perfect. I may in my criticism or my praise be wrong. I can only find out in dialog with others. Which is why I cannot be silent.
If we mutually pledge, then we must communicate.
our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor
mutually pledged to one another
including the requirement to speak out, to seek to right wrongs, to recognize that our "self" interest should be inclusive
Perhaps then the self-evident truths of our founding declaration can truly be a regular part of our American nation.
Peace.