Independance in 2004
Independance Day is not a unique holiday for America. Technically speaking, some countries may have many such days throughout the year. The issue always centers around the idea of an original owner. In our case, it was the British. Many countries contributed to our population, but it seemed to us that the British monarch was too strict to bear any longer.
Regardless of origin, the future Americans agreed by common life to become something other than what their immediate past would indicate. They literally changed identities. It was a bold move at the time, but it does give us a good example of just how shallow and tenuous identities really are.
Today, changing citizenship is largely a legal matter. But, we still maintain that there is a strong American identity, and some things people do is un-American. I believe we can understand that personal liberty is the priority, but we still want everyone to match our commonly created idea of a moral, upstanding citizen. If you don’t know what that means, how can you really be an American?
I would assert that people with integrity, fair morality, and an open mind embody the true American spirit. The idea of “American” originated from those traits, not the other way around. If you do not have these traits, you are actually no worse off than anyone else. Each person has this capacity naturally. It is just a matter of expression, of being able to manifest these traits in the natural course of a day.
The thing is, the citizens of every country believe the same thing. How do we get turned around? It is the attachment to a single static image. If anyone is figured as different, there is the divide. This is the entry to the political world. The way we divide people is infinite, it knows no boundaries. We use every possible distiction to turn people into classes.
The only way we as a country can truly become united is to transcend these distinctions. The features that set us apart are never going to go away, but they can be seen for the arbitrary divisions that they are. When seen in this light, they lose the potency to tear us apart and set us against each other. When this happens, how could we not see that even our own country is an arbitrary division? Maybe then we will be ready to move into the domain of a truly united people. We can only be independant when there is no unity.