Daily Lesson for July 4, 2016

Today's daily lesson is a reflection on the meaning of America:

In a 2002 address, the former chair of the National Endowment of the Humanities delivered a speech in which he said:

"A nation that does not know why it exists or what it stands for cannot be expected to long endure . . . We must recover from the amnesia that shrouds our history in darkness, our principles in confusion, and our future in uncertainty.  We cannot expect that a nation which has lost its memory will keep its vision."

Independence Day is about reclaiming memory.  It is a time set aside to observe not only the fact of our nation's birth, but also its meaning. We set aside July 4th to protect us from amnesia as a country and to behold yet again the vision set before us in the Preamble to our Declaration of Independence-- to be a nation which honors and protects the right to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" for all its people.

In his famous 1852 Independence Day speech, runaway slave turned famous political activist Frederick Douglass said this of those famous words of our Declaration:

"I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost."

If we read beyond the Declaration's Preamble and we see the "saving principles" Douglas was speaking of: a high regard for individual civil liberty, a strong commitment to representative government, and the value of independent judiciary.  These stood in direct contrast to despotism and tyranny when the Declaration was signed in 1776. They still do today.

Douglass called these principles our nation's "ringbolt". A ringbolt is the bolt which fastens a ship to its anchor.  Having worked as a slave in the shipbuilding industry in Maryland Douglas knew the importance of a strong ringbolt.  To call these principles our ringbolt is to say they are what will keep us anchored when the storms threaten.

We live in a time of storms, an era when foes domestic and foreign threaten our way of life. Independence Day is a day set aside to help us remember our ringbolt -- a day set aside to help us remember what anchors us as a nation, and what we as a people would be lost without.

Our forefathers had a vision that we would be the land of the free. That is why we exist; and that is what will enable us to endure.