Barely a century into your existence and your denizens fought to define the nature and structure of your government, to decide whether the principles espoused by your founding fathers "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" was merely scrawling on a piece of parchment or was it something that was imbued into your very soul, your DNA. You emerged scarred but victorious from that struggle, morally and spiritually rejuvenated. The blemish of slavery was wiped from your forehead and you were pure once again.
But the scar was a wound and it festered, for the differences that exist in the hearts of men can scarcely be obviated by the smoke and the blood of war and destruction. So your promise, your oath to humanity, that all men are created equal, was mortgaged for political gain, to be reclaimed only a century later at great cost and at great human suffering in the meantime. You destroyed and made homeless millions of native Americans, the true sons of the soil, because it was your 'Manifest Destiny' to expand from coast to coast, to claim the land, the rivers, the forests for your own sake, and for none other. You claimed to be a Christian nation, driven by Christian morals, beliefs and principles, and yet it was the meek that you reveled in suppressing and crushing beneath the wheels of your 'progress'.
But you aren't alone in these sins and so you cannot be alone in your penitence. For at least you acknowledged your errors and made amends for it, and for that you are a superior nation. You fought two great wars in the defense of freedom and liberty, albeit entering conflict only when your own people were threatened or harmed, but if selfishness should be a crime, then humanity is guilty of it as a whole. If you were guarded against entering a conflict you didn't see as your own, once you made a cause your own, you embraced every tenet, every facet of it to its entirety and were its greatest champion in the face of all odds.
You were among the pioneers in the race to reach for the stars, and in that goal, we saw ourselves as one people on one earth. This little blue sphere was wracked by your struggle with your foes to protect what you saw as the ideal of freedom and we often stood on the brink of destruction, wondering whether the freedom you were fighting for was worth the effort. It was, and we thank you for your perseverance.
You have lived the words of James Russell Lowell in his Stanzas on Freedom
"Is true Freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt?
No! true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free!"
You are a nation of contradictions - a nation founded on the idea of liberty and freedom, and yet one that distrusted its own citizens based on what was the color of their skin or the accent of their tongue or their origins or their beliefs. In that you show your humanity, that while you were created to be a perfect State, you evolve and improve on your faults, just as humanity does in its constant struggles.
You face a greater challenge now. Your foes in earlier days were visible, ones who could be destroyed by sheer force, but your most difficult struggles have been against those demons who infest the minds and souls of men, for there force is ineffective. Like slavery, segregation, fascism, and absolutism, ideas and beliefs cannot be uprooted by drones or guns. It is the hearts and minds of men that you must win if you must emerge victorious in this struggle against terror, anarchy, and the enemies of humanity. There only the brilliance of your ideals and the dint of your will can cause a lasting impact.
As Lady Liberty stands proud on Ellis Island, her torch a beacon promising the warmth of freedom to all those who struggle under oppression, as your star-spangled banner reminds the world of the permanence of the star-filled heavens, so do you, by your actions and your ideals, remind the world of Einstein's words, "Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual that can labor in freedom." Stay true and firm on this path.
Happy Independence Day, America!
