I hope everyone is enjoying their Fourth of July. I decided to send out a post on this holiday even though New Branchhead is a political Substack, because the Fourth of July has always been intertwined with politics. The holiday was created in the early 1800s by supporters of Thomas Jefferson to promote their candidate’s achievements in the Revolutionary era. It gradually outgrew its partisan origins, but our celebration of a particular national origin myth has never lost its political resonance.
This is a very precarious and scary moment for our country. Donald Trump is a fascist. And Joe Biden may be so burdened by physical and cognitive debilities that he cannot defeat his challenger and prevent the severe degradation of democratic institutions and civil liberties that Trump has explicitly promised he will carry out. I do not have the requisite wisdom to steer us out of this dilemma. Instead, I will simply quote two men far wiser and more tested-by-crisis than nearly any American today, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, jr.
Here is King, rebutting those who believe social progress is inevitable:
“Such a view stems from a tragically false view of time, from the strangely rational notion that time itself will inevitably cure all ills. Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to work to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.”
And here is Lincoln, expressing hope:
“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and every patriot’s grave to every heart and hearthstone across this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when they are touched again, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
I wish you an enjoyable holiday and hope that our republic will survive for another day, another year, and another election.