Today is a big day for the little town of Blaine, WA. We have a parade, a car show, and vendors in the streets. It is all capped off with a giant fireworks display. I just read an article with an interview of our mayor.
According to the article, our celebration will be muted this year considering it is our 250th, because of lack of Canadians. The article cites store closures due to lack of Canadian traffic. That is true. We had a number of mail stores. Canadians would have mail sent here and come down to get it. Those stores closed during Covid. The article failed to mention a new Mexican restaurant, barber, oyster restaurant, McDonalds, car wash, medical center. As is so often the case, the reporter was looking for a down side.
I think it is a good time to reflect on what it means to be American. I’ll start with what it means to be a country.
I used C0-pilot search and found that internation law defines a country using four criteria.
1. A stable population. There isn’t a minimum number of people. The people have to be permanent residents and not transients.
2. The country controls a definite territory. Borders can be in dispute, but the country must have borders and effective control of the borders.
3. The entity must have an effective government. The government must provide public order, enforcing laws, collecting revenue, and providing basic services.
4. A state must be able to conduct foreign affairs, negotiate treaties, and fulfill international obligations.
Without borders, you don’t have a country. If laws are not enforced, you don’t have a country. Without the ability to negotiate treaties and fulfill international obligations, you don’t have a country.
None of that is unique to America. What do Americans celebrate today?
We actually celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. For me, the most meaningful part is the following:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 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 to 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.”
Certainly, we have struggled to live up to the idea all men are created equal. We fought a civil war for freedom of slaves. Yet, we had laws that kept whites in control for about a century. I am proud to see the number of my friends and relatives with grandchildren of mixed race. We still struggle with equality.
Women were finally recognized as equal to men and given the right to vote. Yet, men still received preferential treatment in the work force. Title 9 of federal law gave men and women equal opportunity in education and athletics. Women’s sports were finally allowed. Now transgender women want to play women’s sports with some of the advantages of a male body. Should we have teams that are unisex? How will women fair in such an environment? We still struggle with equality.
We have finally created laws to protect sexual preference. Although we still have a long way to go, one of my favorite examples of improvement is Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent. Secretary Bessent is the first treasury secretary to be openly gay. I don’t like him because he is gay. I like him for his ideas. He is an example of hiring based on merit. Discrimination is hiring people based on their membership of a protected class. We should be hiring people based on merit, based on their ideas and abilities, not based on their protected class. We still struggle with equality.
I could go on and on.
I don’t celebrate today because we have a perfect country. I celebrate today because we started with an ideal and we continue to struggle to reach it. We struggle to give every citizen an opportunity to excel. That includes an opportunity to fail. When we fail, we allow people to declare bankruptcy and try again.
Certainly, rich have more opportunities than poor. We continue to struggle with income equality. We continue to struggle with health care equality.
We must try new things. We must also not be afraid to recognize when our attempts have failed and to try something else. We must recognize when our attempts have succeeded and our priorities can shift.
We don’t have a perfect country. We have a country built on ideas. As Pentanomics shows us, it is constant improvement that maximizes the good. We must continue to constantly improve. I believe that we are constantly improving.
Happy Independence Day USA!!
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