This weekend will be a jubilant one throughout the nation as Americans celebrate the Fourth of July despite the fluctuating economy, and gas prices among other circumstances which may affect coastal areas taking a heavy toll on vacation resorts as well as numerous other businesses and professions. Many will be enjoying picnics, fireworks, parades and lots of ceremonial observances honoring America’s Independence from Great Britain in 1776.
From its very inception the United States was unlike other nations, we glean from an old edition of World Order magazine. “The country had been settled by pilgrims who sought to build in the wilderness of a virtually unknown continent a ‘new Jerusalem.’ Yet their pursuit quickly revealed paradoxes that would plague their descendents ever after.” Professing Christianity, they nevertheless dispossessed, massacred and extorted land from the original inhabitants and labor from hundreds of thousands of slaves brought here against their will. Fearful of a stern God, they produced a government of laws and much lawlessness and even today America continues to struggle to conquer the continent by pursuit of happiness as equated through private gain and the right of the strong.
“How will America discover her true self? Through what mysterious process would she give up racism, national arrogance and notions of imperialist manifest destiny?” When will she discover that separatism is not the answer to the American dilemma for we are all foreign-born or the descendants of foreign-born, and if distinctions are to be made between us they should rightly be other than indigenous.
America is already the world-federation in miniature, the continent where for the first time in history has been achieved that miracle of hope, the peaceful living side by side of the most heterogeneous peoples of the earth–some of whom cannot do the same in their own homelands.
Clearly recognizing her many shortcomings, may we of all races, national origins, political and religious persuasions, be confident on this birthday that, however sweeping the changes, this great American nation will continue to evolve undefeatable until its full destiny in the unification and peaceful cohabitation of mankind upon this planet is fulfilled.
