by Kimberly Blaker

What is the meaning of Independence Day? For most, it’s a reminder of the hard-won freedoms our Founding Fathers effected, and that generations since have managed, not without toil and bloodshed, to fully actuate (equal rights for women and African-Americans), and to maintain for more than two centuries.

Despite the slow and agonizing process to fully incorporate all of our Constitutional freedoms into real life circumstance, the meaning behind Independence Day is not only the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the freedom from oppressive rule that it represents, but the beginning of a new era in which a government would be established honoring the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (or property) of all Americans. Though the Constitution of the United States had not yet evolved, it was this momentous event that set it in motion.

Certainly Independence Day is to celebrate our liberation from a tyrannical ruler and to reflect upon the brave men and women who stood up to this force. But equally, it’s a celebration of the Constitutional freedoms that societies around the globe envy us for and that, despite often taking them for granted, we have come to respect, love, and rely upon.

Given the current course of this nation, I think it pertinent to review what this great national holiday does not mean to our President, his administration, and their Christian Right allies.

To them, Independence Day does not mean acceptance of all beliefs and true religious freedom for all Americans; it means freedom of religion for those who practice according to conservative Christian views.

Attorney General John Ashcroft’s exclusionary statement to Christian broadcasters on February 18, 2002, that: “Civilized people—Muslims, Christians and Jews—all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator,” is but one of a multitude of examples. Apparently, to Ashcroft, Hindus, Pagans, Buddhists, Confusions, and the nonreligious don’t fit the mold of civilized peoples.

To Bush and his accomplices, Independence Day is not about a government deriving its “just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” For Bush, those powers are derived from God; not unlike the Taliban’s and Osama bin Laden’s powers that are derived from Allah in waging their Jihad on a rival religion.

36 kenmore cooktops floor heating warm floors. Proof is in Bush’s June 27, disclosure that: “God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”

Nor to our President, is Independence Day about the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and the press. What was his response in May 1999 to a lawful parody web site in which he was the oaf? “There ought to be limits to freedom”

To the Christian Right and our current Administration, Independence Day is not about reproductive freedom, the right to die with dignity, or the right to harmless scientific inquiry (stem cell research); it is not about racial equity, gay and lesbian rights, or women’s equality; it is not about the protection of children and their freedom from parental assault; it is not about the freedom to read, artistic expression, and to a free and unbiased (religious neutral) education.

To them, what Independence Day truly represents is opportunity—to project a false Patriotism to the American public in an effort to conceal their true agenda, one that was already in place when President Bush took office and he immediately proclaimed a National Day of Prayer on January 20, 2001 that soon escalated into an ambush against the First Amendment and a slew of other Constitutional protections.

Need I say more?

 

Kimberly Blaker’s The Wall™ appears weekly. She is editor and coauthor of the The Fundamentals of Extremism: the Christian Right in America. Send your comments to Kimberly Blaker: TheWall@TheWall-OnChurchAndState.com  © 2002, Kimberly Blaker