Let freedom fly high this July 4! Photo courtesy of Adobe.
The Fourth of July is a very significant holiday for San Luis Obispo High School students, considering the fact that they live in the United States of America. The existence of this country is owed much to what happened in 1776.
“July 4, 1776 is the day the United States became a distinct entity. The crucial part of that, to me, is that the United States really did represent something new at the time. Though the Constitution was over a decade in the future when the Declaration was written, the notion that people ought to govern and make decisions for themselves without any guidance or control from a king, queen, tsar, dictator, etc represented a profound shift in the world and eventually led to the growth of democracies around the world,” said United States History teacher Seamus Perry.
Unfortunately, there are a particular group of people who don’t believe patriotism in America is a good thing, mostly because of happenings during the early years of the U.S., such as slavery and native land being stolen.
“I do not celebrate the Fourth of July because I believe Native Americans don’t get enough representation in it. People want to celebrate American patriotism and don’t care about the people who were on this land first and had it taken from them,” said sophomore Joseph R. Bernardo.
There had been no other country like the United States when it was formed. It was the land of the free. Leaders would be voted for by the people, freedom of speech and self defense were top priority, these are all things worth celebrating.
It’s true that the way Native Americans were removed over time was brutal and unfair, and there are better ways we could’ve gone about it, but it’s dishonest to say that we should not be proud of what this country set out to do and what it has done since its formation just because we made some mistakes along the way.
There’s an idea that our founding fathers were vicious racists and sexists who only cared about the white man’s interests.
“For all the high flown language of the Declaration of Independence, the men who wrote it believed that their views counted in a way that the views of women, African Americans, both enslaved and free, indigenous Americans and many, many others did not,” said Perry.
Yet George Washington went on record to say slavery was the only “unavoidable subject of regret” of his life, John Adams never owned a slave, James Madison called the practice “the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man”, and Benjamin Franklin went to congress with an abolition petition.
These are just a few of the many examples of anti-slavery views by the founders of the United States.
The United States of America is a special place because of the freedom it represents, and it deserves to be celebrated every Fourth of July. Make this day about the celebration of the land of the free and home of the brave.
