Stateside: Fourth of July

This day, we in the United States celebrate with bright bursts of light, loud noises, the smell of BBQ, and 80 percent discounts in stores, the signing of the nation’s founding document—the Declaration of Independence.

Oops! Wait a minute. This day commemorates the document’s publication, not its signing. As the search-aggregation website Finding Dulcinea says with admirable brevity in its daily email:

“On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress first published the unsigned Declaration of Independence. The document had been adopted by the Congress on July 2, but 39 revisions were made over the next two days. Finally, on July 4, the document was deemed final, and church bells rang out all over Philadelphia. The document was not actually signed until a month later.”

You can read the full story on Finding Dulcinea’s website here, and for links to primary sources about the Revolutionary War, you could go to Footnote, which has 7 days free access to Revolutionary War Documents here. (Some of what Footnote is giving you free access to is freely available at the National Archives website anyway.)

It’s common here in the States to wish people “Happy Fourth of July” rather than “Happy Independence Day”, which seems rather odd to me. Often it’s shortened to “Happy Fourth”, which I secretly interpret as “Happy forth!”—a friendly command to go forth in a happy frame of mind. The world would be a much better place if we all obeyed that command every day, don’t you think?

But I shall put my Pollyanna instincts to one side, and tell you about three Independence Day-related items that came into close orbit with Planet Rosalea over the past week.

::Acres of Diamonds::

(No, not baseball or softball diamonds, though there’ll be plenty of those in action today.) For some reason, lost in the mists of e-time, I am on the mailing list for information about a former Justice of the Supreme Court, Robert H. Jackson. In the week prior to the Fourth of July, 1941, then-Attorney General Jackson had been through his Senate confirmation hearings for appointment to SCOTUS. Here is an excerpt from a speech he gave that Fourth of July, originally intended to have been delivered at the Washington Monument as part of national celebrations, but the event was rained out, so it was given on the radio instead.

“…we dwell among resources as incredible as acres of diamonds.

“But there is at home and abroad an anti-democratic influence, even more cynical and sinister and dangerous than Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin combined. I refer to those who think democracy is a fair weather ideal — to guide us in soft times — but that when the going is tough we cannot save it without losing it. This doctrine has every base quality of fascism without either its candor or courage. Let us in America never forget that liberties trampled by conquest may be regained, but liberties abandoned by an indifferent people are never recovered. Nor are they deserved.”

Jackson ended his speech with a quote from Kipling: Though all we knew depart/The Old Commandments stand:/‘In courage keep your heart,/In strength lift up your hand.’

::Free and Equal::

One group that has lifted up its hand is Free and Equal. After all, it’s all very well to hold certain truths to be self-evident—including equality and the right to liberty—and to institute a form of government “by the people”, but if those people are limited in their choice of representatives to vote for by an electoral system that makes it difficult for anyone outside the two main parties to get on the ballot, then Jackson’s concerns about insidious fascism are not unfounded.

“Happy Independence Day!” declared the email I received this morning from Christina Tobin, founder of the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, and Libertarian candidate for California’s Secretary of State. You can read the email yourself, posted on the foundation’s website here. In it, Tobin links to two Rasmussen polls, one of which shows that three-fourths of those polled would rather live in America than in any other part of the world. The other Rasmussen poll, taken in February, showed that less than a quarter of those polled believe the federal government has the consent of the governed.

::Red, white and blue::

With its assertion that “Americans across all party lines overwhelmingly believe the United States is the greatest nation on Earth”, Tobin’s email panders to just one aspect of Fourth of July celebrations. Besides patriotism, there is the appeal of family gatherings, hot dog eating competitions, fireworks displays, parades, and special offers and deals for those buying anything under the Fourth’s (hopefully) sunny skies.

One such commercial patriotic reminder that I received last week when I bought a pack of cigarettes left me metaphorically speechless given that it has the potential to leave me literally so. Non-smoking laws abound in states and municipalities across the nation. So what’s a poor beleaguered tobacco company to do? Well, cigarettes aren’t the only nicotine delivery system. Before giving me the cigs, the shop assistant slipped the pack into a special sleeve:

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Attached to the back of the sleeve is a pack of 24 smokeless tobacco pouches.

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The tobacco plantations of Virginia were integral to the events that led up to the Declaration of Independence. As this webpage on virginiaplaces.org states: “Initially, tobacco was exported directly to England, France, Holland, the Caribbean Islands, and South America. Virginia provided more revenue to England than any other colony, through a 2 shilling/hogshead export tax on tobacco. To ensure a higher percentage of the profits were kept in England, Charles II issued the Navigation Acts in 1651. These acts prohibited export of tobacco except to English ports - but enterprising Scottish and Dutch sea captains still traded in the Chesapeake and, at times, evaded the authorities and the export fees. The efforts to control the colonial economy to benefit the merchants in England led, in part, to the American Revolution in 1775.”

So, in the spirit of patriotism, let’s all light up for the Fourth of July!

Just in case you think I’m encouraging nicotine use, here is a link to the website of New Zealand’s Ministry of Health, showing the warning messages that must cover 30 percent of the front and 90 percent of the back of cigarette packets. I will leave you to ponder for yourself whether those polled by Rasmussen back in February would think such graphic warnings being federally mandated on tobacco products in the US would be a good or a bad thing. (In New Zealand, smokeless tobacco products can currently be imported for personal use, but are subject to excise tax and their distribution, sale and promotion are prohibited. The sale and distribution of chewing tobacco has been illegal there since 1990.)

--PEACE—

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

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