Independence Day

It's Independence Day, and most of my family are up in Utah today, having the annual Robinson 4th of July Picnic at a park near my grandma's home. It's been a tradition for as long as I can remember, and I've been there most years. But because of work, I couldn't make it this year. So while my extended family are barbecuing, eating tons of watermelon, playing Oh Heck and Settlers of Catan and Boggle, and the younger ones are splashing around in the creek, I'm sitting at my computer in Arizona (because it's too hot to go outside) thinking about what Independence Day means to me personally.

It's the birthday of the United States. It means parades and picnics and fireworks,  patriotic songs and speeches, wearing red, white, and blue and eating cakes decorated to look like the American flag. It's a celebration of American culture, from the exalted to the ordinary (but mostly the ordinary). Yet Independence Day isn't just about America--at least, not for me, and I believe it's true of most Americans. Independence Day is a celebration of liberty--an abstract concept, built in our individual and collective consciousness through the repetition of words, ideas, images, and experiences.

It began (the holiday, though certainly not the idea) with the now-immortal words of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Liberty is not only a matter of good government, nor only a secular, philosophical, or humanistic principle, but a sacred principle that constitutes both a right and a duty, both to maintain it, and to use it wisely. The Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and other scriptures from many religious traditions, affirm that liberty is God-given and essential.

I love my country. I cherish the freedoms I enjoy as a citizen of the United States, though I have to admit, most of the time I simply take them for granted. I didn't have to sacrifice my life's blood for them--the hardest things I have to do (so far) to maintain them is to study principles and current issues, talk (and sometimes argue) about them, and vote. I don't love everything my country does, and I worry deeply sometimes about various directions it's going. But I believe in what Jefferson said, and I believe that despite its faults, our system of government is still capable of fostering liberty, justice and prosperity on a scale almost unique in human history.

I love this land--especially the west, where I've spent most of my life. The endless canyons of the Wasatch mountains in northern Utah, the magnificent red rocks of southern Utah; the cool, high desert of the Snake River valley in Idaho;  the rolling wheat-topped hills of the Palouse in Washington, which, in late summer, when the wind blows, look like a great golden ocean; and the strange brown beauty of Arizona that I'm only beginning to know. There's so much space out here, it's no wonder we Americans tend to dream big. I haven't ever traveled abroad, though I hope to, but I see much that is admirable and good about many other countries, and I appreciate the love my foreign friends have for their native lands. I love America not only because of the principles it stands for (however imperfectly), but also simply because it's mine. I'd rather live here than anywhere else.

I was going to write more--about culture and people and faith and family; this post was going to be really ambitious, but it's taken a surprisingly long time for me to write this much. The picnic in Utah is almost certainly over, and meanwhile my stomach is growling. It's time to go barbecue something.