Editorial

Let Freedom Ring
Doug Myers

"There he goes again," the international community will cry in despair, "celebrating his own country's parochial holiday in an international publication!" One would think that I'd learned my lesson last Christmas when, after I'd confessed to a certain respect for the American GI, I was roundly criticized for not holding more worldly sentiments.

Okay... Tomorrow, July 4 of 2000, is Independence Day in the United States of America. It's the 224th anniversary of the day we proclaimed ourselves to be an independent nation... and the celebration still thrills me.

To me, it's a celebration of human freedom. It's not that the United States invented freedom, nor even that we're the only people in the world to achieve it... but it's nevertheless the day we celebrate our country's commitment to human freedom, and we've done a tolerable job of sticking to that commitment.

Before I incur the wrath of the international community again, let me point out that a certain pride in my own country doesn't detract from the greatness of others. A celebration of my own freedom doesn't deny the freedom people throughout the world enjoy and have worked and fought for.

Let me acknowledge that our sense of freedom was largely inherited from the country which held us as a colony prior to Independence Day. in fact, we weren't particularly oppressed when we revolted, and our own expressions of freedom ever after were largely modeled on the Magna Carta and laws and sentiments of our English "oppressors."

Perhaps we were like errant children who had grown up and had to leave the nest to make our own way. And our own mistakes... it took us almost a hundred years to disown the institution of slavery which denied the very freedoms we had declared in our nation's birth, and almost a hundred more to begin lifting the mantle of second class citizenship from the descendants of our former slaves.

But we did it, and we're still pointed in a direction which acknowledges the freedom of each individual... and it's a concept which seems to have taken root throughout the world. It would be pretentious to believe that we've caused that, but I'm nonetheless proud to be a son of a country which participates in promoting the freedom of all individuals.

To the international community, let me extend an invitation to celebrate our Independence Day with us. I know you've brought your own freedom with you, but tomorrow the fireworks are on my country!