The\u00a0founding fathers’\u00a0collective experience of European monarchs imposing a state religion with the same rationale as Constantine had for Christianity in the Roman Empire, had the separation of church and state clarified in the\u00a0U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n
Ecclesiastical bodies posed a problem in Europe but to avoid repeating a mistake, the U.S. threw the bath water without\u00a0much provision for the baby.\u00a0Religion serves to rehearse the dramaturgy of life\u2019s meaning and significance; America left that in the region of individual conscience.\u00a0Beliefs replaced liturgy, elevated by the Cartesian dictum of \u201cI think, therefore, I am.\u201d\u00a0 It did serve the function of moving religious battles out of the shooting fields to the pulpits and the podia of public debates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bereft of dramaturgical commonality, the United States government replaced it with legal holidays.\u00a0The Chamber of Commerce made Christmas a consumer fest, and Hallmark sanctified Thanksgiving along with other commemorative occasions all the way from mothers\/fathers\u2019 day to the recognition of office administrative assistants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Fourth of July thus comes closest to being a \u201creligious\u201d ritual of the American covenant and communion freighting the national understanding of its raison d\u2019etre\u2014of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.<\/p>\n
The American revolt managed to shake off Brit George’s sovereign rule to tax his subjects to pay for his war expenses.\u00a0That his war happened to be against France is ironic since Paul Revere, the crier hero of the revolution, was half French.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It became clear after the ragtag army of Virginian George sent the Red Coats back to Piccadilly that building a nation, let alone, running it, took some doing.\u00a0The easy way out was to offer George W kingship\u00a0of the new state.\u00a0His intelligence overrode his ego, wisely declined, and left his name to later identify one of the nation\u2019s illustrious universities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Columbian trade made lots of silver on the back of black slaves from the West Coast of Africa, particularly in the sugar and cotton fields.\u00a0John Hancock of the well-known signature and head of the First Continental Congress inherited his uncle\u2019s wealth earned smuggling.\u00a0JFK\u2019s dad was reputed to have done the same with rum during Prohibition.\u00a0 That is not totally un-American; after all, we label Phillip Morris today as a company with a social conscience!\u00a0 Tobacco and cotton were grown in the South on the forced labor of Sambo, Uncle Rufus, and Aunt Jemima.<\/p>\n
American enterprise worships at the altar of the mighty buck, and at its inception, Wall Street\u2019s buccaneers and privateers understood the speculative value of real estate and its endless supply west of the Mississippi, so it did not take long before the railroad barons exploited cheap Chinese labor from the Gold Rush and laid rails from coast to coast.\u00a0The Exclusion Act against the \u201cyellow fever\u201d later established immigrations\u2019 legal frame.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Fourth of July is a beacon of hope embodying the Puritan\u2019s understanding of American exceptionalism, \u201cthe light upon the hill,\u201d adding \u201cmanifest destiny\u201d when McKinley went down on his knees with Methodist missionaries heading for the Philippines to educate, civilize, and evangelize the poor natives.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier, the third French Republic and the Portuguese, in a spurt of liberal impulse,\u00a0took colonizing the world as a \u201cmission to civilize.\u201d\u00a0With the allure of the eastern Asian tiger about to be roasted and carved out by the European powers, the U.S. saw no problem in forcibly donning the lei of Aloha by ousting Hawaii\u2019s monarchy, buying Guam and the Philippines from Spain, and joined in feasting on the imperial table\u00a0amidst the Qing’s Queue and Qi Pao.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Western hubris intervened when France avenged its humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War. Austro-Hungary was humbled at the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the Great War 1914-18, and\u00a0resentful Austrian corporal Aryan Adolf Hitler rose up to play the Great War games one more time.\u00a0It was in these theatres that the Fourth of July added to its rationale of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny the \u201csacred service and sacrifice of our soldiers\u201d, a theme drummed loudly in many quarters today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During 1976 bicentennial, colleagues extended the dynamic of broadening community participation in the political process to other societies around the world.\u00a0My domains were Town Meeting USA, Community Forum Canada, and Community Forum Philippines.\u00a0At the time, we were riding on the theme of a new declaration of global interdependence, way before Earth summits were held and the Earth charter written. \u00a0<\/p>\n
China\u2019s traditional input of fireworks to our celebrations will be missed in many\u00a0states this year, but the reverse is true, presence of McDonald-KFC-Pizza Hut in many of China city\u2019s street corners make them look like Chinatown USA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More profoundly, we watched President Hu Jintao admonish members of the CPC, the country\u2019s ruling political party, on its 90th year anniversary Friday,\u00a0 to weed out corruption from government and to establish the integrity of public service especially among the young in broadening political engagement and participation, a theme that sounded more like one given down Main St. on the fourth of July.<\/p>\n
The Fourth of July is emerging in places sans USPS zip codes.\u00a0How is it celebrated in your part of the glocal village?\u00a0\u00a0I am\u00a0pulling out the old “America the Beautiful” song, and in the spirit of making the old new, and the new holy, sing the last line of verses one and four replacing “brotherhood” with: “And crown thy good with earthlihood\/planethood.”\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Happy Interdependence Day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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