Fourth of July 250: A Pledge of Compatriots

 

The writers of the Declaration of Independence closed their document with a pledge:

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. 

Nice.  It seems comfortably fluffy because of our familiarity with it.  In reality, it carries an extreme weight.  To decide to oppose your king by force, to declare that he has no authority over you or your land -- that's treason (in a royalist's perspective).  So when they say, "pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor," they mean it literally: if the colonists had not succeeded in their endeavor for independence, they would have all been killed--those who signed the document (with John Hancock placing his signature in very large script to be prominent -- a message to the King).

If they had failed to secure liberty from the king, they would literally have forfeited every last thing they possessed; their families would have suffered in destitute circumstances.  None of them would have retained a shred of honor for their cause as they all would have been made examples of -- the signatories at least being killed ignobly.  (And just why is it that the concept of "honor" doesn't seem to weigh very much in the collective American mind these days?)

John Hancock's Huge Signature: "In Your Face, Georgie Boy!"

During the American Revolution, one of my ancestors, Capt. Fredrick Cramer, from New Jersey, fought along side George Washington.  An account has it that during one of the various battles during which Washington was nearly killed, his horse was shot from under him.  As officers typically rode white horses (well...George had at least one brown one), a white horse was an honor and a duty since your men could see you clearly as you led them in battle (and a white horse also made you an easy target) -- Cramer handed his white horse to Washington.

Another of my ancestors, a Richards from North Carolina, ran into the woods with his son as the British invaded his village and tried to rid the place of patriots.  The document indicates Richards "was murdered and his wife killed" for their support of independence: they had been hiding patriots.  I'm not sure there's a great difference between "murdered" and "killed" -- "dead" seeming pretty much the same for one as for the other.  But the king had defined them as "rebels" and supporters of "treason," even as Thomas Paine and others were defining the king's actions as tyranny against inalienable human rights.  He who controls the definitions....  How did the king label those who participated in the Boston Tea Party?  We call them patriots today.  But back then?  See the ironies in the use of definitions and labels employed by those of the reigning ideology?

It's a serious undertaking to oppose a king.  That is just what the "protesters" and "rebels" in any country have gambled: their actual lives, and fortunes, and honors in order to be free of despots and dictators, manipulators of the laws and industrial-political connivers.  They, too, risk literally everything, and many, like my ancestors, have paid with their lives for freedom.

There are other ironies inherent in this independence we have: we still pay taxes on tea and windows.  Imagine that.  And who doesn't think that tax dollars (billions) are wasted every day in Washington?  Even given the inconsistencies and ironies, the freedoms to be had in the US stand apart from those in other places throughout the rest of the world.  Simply put, freedoms are immense in the U.S. -- absolutely immense when we think about the histories of many other countries.

Yet...I've come to think that Americans' right to pursue happiness is often taken well beyond reasonable, equitable, or beneficial.  Does that "right" seem today to mean solely, "I can do whatever I damned well please," but fails to include my responsibility for how my actions impact the welfare of others?  So it seems to many Americans I meet here and abroad.  It violates the social contract that the Constitution lays out, as not only Jefferson and Company saw it (and wrote it) but also as Hume, Locke, and Plato saw these social responsibilities.

For instance, the Greeks (whose ideas of democracy largely became our own) saw such a person as an idiot.  Idiot is a word we get from the Greek, ἴδιος -- someone who is a private person, concerned only with their own affairs and pursuits without consideration for how their deeds affect the good of the city-state, they do not care about the good of all the people, the πολλοὶ -- the very people around them who share the same community with its rights and responsibilities.  These are people with whom you have a social contract and agree to abide by the same laws for the good of all, even at the expense of limiting some of your individual, private freedoms.  Read your Hume and Locke, if not also your Plato.

In this context, idiocy means, say (on a large scale), collusion between crooked politicians, big-business magnates, or a collection of Bernard Madoffs (am I being redundant here?) who ferret away their own special-interest packets while not working for the public's or their constituents' best interests -- who work against the rights of all within their society.  Lobby-ism.  "Corporations are people, too."  Not.  And when that idea undermines the Constitution, the people's rights, and laws that were written for and protect the individual, not a corporation, then it all comes at the public's expense and the demise of their rights and freedoms.

On a smaller scale, idiocy means the self-serving individual who stands in the middle of the aisle at the grocery store, blocking the way, oblivious to others in the aisle, or the person who rides sloowwwly down the interstate in the passing (left) lane...blocking traffic.  Idiots.

Watch the police (from the Greek, polis, city) move one of these idiots over:

 

The writers of the Declaration knew this word, ἴδιος (Jefferson and others knew Greek and had read their Plato...).  We were never meant to be so free as to climb over others or impede others' freedoms while pursuing our own.  And Plato clearly saw a politician as someone who is not intent on building their own fortunes.  Read Plato's work The Republic.  The writers saw it as Freedom with Responsibility for others.  (Is it just me, or is it contradictory to this sense of responsibility that "Capitalism" has come to mean getting ahead -- and doing so in predatory fashion -- at the expense of others?).  But responsibility: that's a large part of the Greek way -- um, the ancient Greek way.  I have no idea how this all applies to Greece's current financial situation.

But the "pledge" in the Declaration, that is a pact made among friends, among compatriots -- I have friends of over 30 years now, friends I can lean on, who know my worst and best, and of whom I know the same, and we don't throw these important connections away.  I like to think that friendship is based on not only what the friends share in common, but on a sacrifice to support each other in both freedom from things we do not desire and freedom to pursue things we do desire.  Isn't that called "happiness"?  And it's mutual.  It involves respect for an individual's sovereign independence as well as respect for our mutual good.

Friendship is a democracy, then, enabling individuals to pursue their own and others' best interests. Friends "mutually pledge to each other our lives...," as the Declaration says.  If that breaks down, notice how friendship ends -- or should end, by common opinion.  So I see it.  And that's what happened in the 1700s between King Georgie's England and the colonies: an end of friendship.

This 4th of July, I celebrate not only the "friendship" of my ancestors who sacrificed much for what I now enjoy, celebrate not only our past and current military personnel and friends like Corpsman Vinny C., "General" Ruxlow, Maj. Hurt, and CW2 Shawn, "Majormajor" Tom, Purple Heart "Owie" Brekke, and many others who have personally sacrificed to retain freedom for us, but I also celebrate well-loved friends who have shared freedom and mutual good with me over many decades.

What a very rich place this land is -- rich no less in friendship.  It was personally costly to create, is personally costly to retain, and well worth sacrificing for, I think.  And it's always a sight nicer without idiocy.