A time to celebrate — and reflect
Our Founding Fathers cautioned that maintaining the Great American Experiment would not be easy. As Thomas Paine admonished, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must ... undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
That warning and challenge remains relevant 243 years after the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the Declaration of Independence, which asserted that “all men are created equal” and were endowed by their creator with the “unalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
It called out, point by point, myriad ways in which King George III had usurped those rights, including representative democracy and the rule of law.
Americans must never take its hardwon freedoms for granted, or forget the institutions that have preserved them through periods in which they have been tested by war, bigotry, fear, lust for power or recognition that the framers of the U.S. Constitution, for all their courage and wisdom, did not recognize all the inequities and injustices that would need to be rectified in the quest for a more perfect union.
So what are those essential elements to the representative democracy envisioned by our Founding Fathers?
One of the most critical is an independent judiciary. It must be willing to go against the whims of any leader in power at any given moment, and even popular sentiment, to defend the rule of law and the rights of the oppressed. The Declaration of Independence expressly deplored a king who made judges “dependent on his will alone.”
Free and fair elections are equally defining traits of a healthy democracy. Even as the 2020 campaign attracts a field of 20 White House challengers — one sign of our democracy’s vibrancy — challenges abound. The influence of big money. The passage of laws designed to suppress voter participation. The drawing of contorted legislative and congressional districts to achieve partisan outcomes. And perhaps most ominously: unimpeachable evidence that a foreign adversary acted aggressively on behalf of a U.S. presidential candidate in 2016 and appears poised to do so again.
Respect for human rights also distinguishes a democratic nation from an authoritarian one. Americans cannot look the other way when migrants seeking asylum in this promised land are denied rights guaranteed to them under U.S. and international law, and are detained in conditions that jolt the conscience.
Our founders welcomed the role of a free press as watchdog of the government they envisioned. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” They knew it might sometimes be uncomfortable for those in power.
One of the glorious moments in the Great American Experiment has been in the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another, especially in the aftermath of a bitter campaign. It shows that Americans can disagree vigorously on issues yet draw upon their common allegiance to the mores and institutions that underpin this democracy.
Shame on a leader who would try to delegitimize these traditions and institutions because he cannot bend them to — borrowing a phrase — “his will alone.” A revolution was fought and won over this principle.
As we have said before, the beauty of this nation is not in its perfection but in the freedom to cite and address its imperfections. And that is something to celebrate today, and a charge to keep refining and expanding the high ideals our framers laid out for us.
Happy Fourth of July.