The Fourth of July celebration -- in origin quite earnest,
and a time for historico-political speechmaking -- has gradually softened and
loosened, like an old sweater, into a fairly agenda-free holiday for
kids: Fireworks, fun, and french fries. Well I recall, how we as
kids lined up along Ridgewood Avenue, excitedly half-comprehendingly, to
watch the parade flow by.
As you grow older, some of it does get old. Brief
bursts of bright blotches against the night sky no longer move me -- not,
at any rate, so much as the least glimpse of God’s own handiwork, like the more
permanent pattern-and-colorburst on the leaves of a coleus.
But in another way, the meaning of this day grows ever
deeper, even sombre. For the success and permanency of the American
Revolution was by no means a foregone conclusion -- we were truly in uncharted
territory back then. The more you learn about history, and the more
history itself keeps happening, you are forced to conclude: Most
revolutions go awry.
To begin with our own. Contrary to the
impression we get in school, at the time of the Declaration of Independence, a
bare one third of the American population was in favor of rebelling against
Britain; a third against; a third undecided. The perfect setting
for an immediate post-revolution civil war. Yet it did not happen (the
Civil War a century later fell along quite different lines). The only
threat came again externally, in 1812 (“the rocket’s red glare, the bombs
bursting in air”), when the wrath of the British Empire was again turned
against us, and the nation’s capital was set in flames. The
pinwheels and cherry bombs of latter days commemorate an actual peril.
Remarkably as well, we managed, over the years and (by now)
centuries, to maintain (most of us) extremely cordial, even intimate relations
with the Mother Country -- an unusual trans-hemispheric affinity, unmatched by
the relations of the Latin American countries to Spain and Portugal (let alone
Haiti to France).
Consider next the French revolution -- “next”, because in fact it was
subsequent to our own, having broke out in 1789; though the way Europeans run
on about it, you’d think it was the first revolution in the history of the
world. Anyhow, it remains a proud occasion; the French version of
Independence Day is Bastille Day, celebrated on July 14, with great
fanfare. (For our friendly nod to our old ally, click here:
Merci
la France.)
Yet their revolution was -- franchise oblige -- a gorawful bloody cock-up. Not content
with overturning centuries of monarchy, the revolutionaries proceeded to la Terreur, and to a sort of
overreaching ideological Gleichschaltung
that foreshadowed the Bolshevik excess. And to crown it all, it didn’t
stick: within a couple of decades, the kings were back.
France did not ultimately found a Republic that stuck, after
the imperial and revived-monarchical interludes, until 1871, with the Third
Republic (which segued into the Fourth and Fifth without a relapse into
pre-Republican polity). Nor did this event stem in any direct way
from the events of 1789. As William Shirer tells it, in The Collapse
of the Third Republic (1969, chapter “A Freakish Birth):
It came into being by a fluke. The National Assembly,
elected in 1871 ... had not wanted a Republic. Nearly two thirds of its
members were Monarchists. But they could not agree on a king …
So the lawmakers … sort of backed into the harness of a
republic … by a majority of one vote … 353 to 352 -- though there would have
been a tie had one deputy, who was against it, not been late in arriving
for the balloting. Even then it was not clear to many members that they
were actually choosing a republic. The day before, they had rejected it,
or thought they had.
By contrast, the Constitution that came out of our
revolutionary days has lasted and guided us down to the present, with
comparatively modest and incremental additions.
~
Since the end of the Second World War, world history has
been spotted by rebellions and revolts, mostly anti-colonial, in quest of
independence. And for the most part, the results have not been
pretty.
And thus the American declaration of independence, which
shone at the time, shines yet more brightly now, against the contrasting
dark. It is as though the metal of which men then were made, deemed
sturdy bronze at the time, were revealed, in the fullness of time, with the
reckonings in and the dust dispersed, to have been, in actual and astonishing
fact, of purest gold.
[The perspective of this essay thus falls under the general rubric of American exceptionalism.]
~
[4 juillet 2014]
The above is a reprint of our essay from earlier years at this time.
Additionally, this morning’s Washington Post has a
quite readable portrait of a contemporary attempt to recapture Independence to
the potential exclusion of certain other values (such as civilization):
Porcfest
And, a view from England:
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21606296-plot-liberate-new-hampshire-anarchists-get-organised
