America isn’t a set of borders. It’s not even the people currently living inside those borders. America is an ideal. Forged by brilliant minds, imperfect men, and messy politics at the country’s birth.
Equality. Freedom of the Press. Separation of Church and State. The founders were familiar with tyranny and strove for a system that contained checks against it.
The 4th of July honors the ideal, and the men and woman who have died to protect it. But Americans of any given era are judged – individually and collectively – as to whether they actively support the ideal or bring tarnish to it.
Slavery collectively tarnished the ideal; Harriet Tubman individually lived up to it in such a badass way that we’re still talking about her today. We collectively tarnished the ideal again with the Japanese Internment camps; George Takei individually lived up to it, not only surviving the camps and using his art to make sure we remember, but fighting for gay rights as well.
We’ve collectively lived up to the ideal many times, even if imperfectly. The Emancipation Proclamation. WWII defeat of the Nazis and the recovery program after. The Civil Rights Amendment. The moon shot. Often the tarnish and the ideal stand side-by-side (see HIDDEN FIGURES).
I believe future Americans will remember our CNN body-slamming president as tarnish. I’m doing what I can individually to mitigate the effects and bend the arc of history back toward the ideal.
Equality for all peoples. A free and strong press. Freedom to practice your religion but not enforce it on others.
I’m inspired by the countless Americans before me who have worked on Group Project America and laid the foundation for the greatest nation on earth – one made great not by its military or even its economy but by the quality of its ideals.
Mary Katherine Goddard was one of those Americans. She was a badass in her own right, publishing scoops from Revolutionary War battles, in spite of the haters, threats, and raids. In bold defiance of literally every convention of the time, she printed her name at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence as she distributed freshly-pressed copies to the colonies. She was a fiery editorial writer, a bookstore owner, and a newspaper printer. After 14 years as postmaster, she was ousted by a small man who thought a woman couldn’t handle the job. But that tarnish doesn’t diminish what she accomplished. Goddard used the power of the press to help forge a nation where she had no vote, no rights, and no liberties except those she dared to claim for herself.
On this Fourth of July, I salute Goddard and the countless others who have worked and risked and sacrificed to uphold the ideals that make America truly great.
(h/t to Rysa Walker for the article)