The Fourth of July holiday celebrates community, national and also local. Parades featuring people in uniform — scouts, firefighters and police as well as our military — traditionally are a fixture.
Military uniforms remind us of the role of war in our history — and present. That in turn introduces a key point about this holiday. We gained our independence from Great Britain and that nationÃÛèÖÊÓƵ global empire through our Revolutionary War, which began in 1775 with the battles of Lexington and Concord, in the British Province of Massachusetts Bay.
The Declaration of Independence, formally proclaimed by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, made the break with Great Britain formal. The document was a collective enterprise, but largely written by Thomas Jefferson.
Our Revolution was a hard struggle, lasting until the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The war proved bloody along with lengthy.
There is a temptation, less today than in the past, to glorify war while glossing over or ignoring the inherent brutality of the practice of organized killing of opposing armed forces plus civilians. The industrial and technological revolutions, also beginning in the 18th century, have made war vastly more destructive and lethal.
July 4 independence ceremonies sometimes obscure the fact that our nation was founded on an idea that was truly revolutionary in the 18th century — equality. In subtle ways, the concept of equality remains challenging.
The proposition that we all have inherent rights, including the right to rebel, turned the status quo of that era upside down.
The revolutionary focus was, and remains today, on the rights of the individual — not the state, not the monarch, not a corporate entity, not a particular economic or social class, certainly not the military. Reflecting this, organization of public authority, the state, was both essential and difficult.
The Articles of Confederation, our initial governing document adopted in 1781, was a weak framework combining the original thirteen colonies of Great Britain, now declared sovereign states.
The reality that this confederation was not effective enough led to a second effort, this time successful. The Constitution of the United States was adopted in 1788.
John Locke (1632-1704) was a shy, mild-mannered and extraordinarily productive English scholar and physician who literally changed the course of history. His “Two Treatises of Government†developed the case for natural rights, including the right to rebel against established authority.
Locke experienced first-hand the extraordinarily bloody English Revolution and Civil War, and associated political turbulence. For a time, he lived in exile. A brilliant recent examination of his impact on the United States is “AmericaÃÛèÖÊÓƵ Philosopher — John Locke in American Intellectual Life†by Claire Rydell Arcenas (University of Chicago Press 2022).
Also in July 1776, the classic “The Wealth of Nations†by Adam Smith (1723-1790) was published in Great Britain. In fascinating fashion, Smith described and insightfully analyzed the rapidly expanding Industrial Revolution, initiated by steam power, transforming the British Empire, the new United States, eventually Europe and the world at large.
Smith also is sometimes mistakenly described as advocating an unfettered, unregulated commercial free market. This is false. In fact, while he celebrated the free market, he also warned against collusion and other corrupting business practices.
Open but regulated commercial activity, greatly expanded by the Industrial Revolution, is a wonder.
The American Revolution went hand-in-hand with economic revolution that transformed human political and social as well as commercial life, and continues to unfold.
Arthur I. Cyr is author of “After the Cold War — American Foreign Policy, Europe and Asia” (Macmillan and NYU Press). Contact acyr@carthage.edu
