I’m back from special family celebrations and putting the finishing touches on my second novel I just sent to my publisher (more about that in the future).
My focus now is on celebrating July 4th.
Not only are we celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of our nation, I suggest we are also celebrating our “Third Founding.”
Let me explain what that means and why it is so important.
The Declaration of Independence was the beginning of our nation’s First Founding. It would take fighting a war of freedom and the ratification of our brilliant Constitution to complete it.
But there was what Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson calls a “Second Founding” that took place during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.
She argues that the nation was essentially re-founded with the addition of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution.
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude; the 14th Amendment institutionalized birthright citizenship and guaranteed due process for everyone charged with a crime; the 15th Amendment prohibited the federal and state governments from denying any citizen the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
These amendments not only renewed our nation’s commitment to its founding principles, but moved us closer to being the country our founders envisioned we could be.
This year’s July 4th is our opportunity for us as a people to establish a Third Founding that re-commits us to the First and Second Foundings.
I read yesterday that some people are feeling too discouraged to celebrate the 4th. We who believe in the values and principles and system of government we have had for 250 years cannot yield to that temptation.
This is a critical moment in our history as we face the assault by Trump and MAGA Repuboicans on everything that makes America America.
This year’s July 4th is no less significant than the first one in 1776. Celebrating it rather than bending a knee to Trump will be a bold statement that we will reject him as forcefully as the Colonists rejected King George III.
It can signal to him that come November we will use the vote he desperately wants to take away from us to reclaim our power to hold him accountable for his lawlessness and corruption.
By voting we can- and I believe will – take control of the House and the Senate, setting the stage for the final step in the Third Founding of our nation, adding the presidency to our control of Congress.
That will then empower us, the people, to reform the radical rightwing Supreme Court that is helping Trump undo the achievements of the First and Second Foundings.
We will add to the number of justices on the court that will in turn lead to undoing the rulings that are standing in the way of our continuing to become a more perfect union that has been taking place for the last 250 years (more about this in a future blog.)
Admittedly, it takes times to change the direction of a country, just as I took time to establish the United States in the first place, and to reform it after the Civil War.
It took 13 years to declare our independence (1776) and ratify the Constitution (1789). Five years passed between the ratification of the 13th and the 15th amendments (1865 to 1870).
It will take only two and a half years for us to restore power to ourselves to rid ourselves of Trump and Trumpism and begin reforming the court.
In the scheme of things, that is a relatively short period of time, and it is worth celebrating on this year’s July 4th our intention to do what is necessary to achieve that goal.
The great irony of having Trump as president and the radical conservatives on the Supreme Court is that it puts us in the historic position of joining patriots of the past in ensuring this great democratic experiment does not perish from the earth.
We may not have chosen to be in this moment, but we are here nonetheless. We are the generation that gets to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
That privilege demands no less than the full measure of our devotion to doing our part to ensure that future generations of Americans have the amazing freedoms and opportunities we have had and are fighting to keep.
I am confident we will not fail to meet the challenge.
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