Happy Fourth!

Today is the last day of my three-and-a-half week vacation, part of which was a long trip back home to visit family and friends from my youth. With retirement looming, it was also a chance to explore some possibilities for relocating. It's been a good break from work and from the preoccupations of the nation's capital, the sort of inside the beltway thinking that wears on one's soul as well as one's patience. In some ways it's gratifying that out there in the rest of the country very few are paying attention to what's going on around here. But in other ways that's a rather disturbing sign of the times. That's how the few are able to deceive the many so effectively.

I wonder what our founding fathers (and mothers) would think about the way things are tending these days. What would be their take on flag burning? Or what would they think to discover that amidst all the other problems of the day flag burning is the hot topic. Of course, we don't like to remember that they thought flag burning was a pretty good way to protest. In fact, it's even better when it's against the law. What's the point of burning a flag if everyone thinks it's the cool thing to do?

But it seems to me that in our zeal to make patriotism some kind of exercise in cheerleading, we may have lost sight of the fact that the original American patriots were a bunch of malcontents who refused to settle for the British status quo. I like that original flag of the revolution, a rattlesnake with the motto "Don't Tread on Me." Now there's a flag that says exactly what it means.

I'm suspicious of any status quo because it fosters complacency, and complacency is the breeding ground for tyranny and corruption, not to mention greed and gluttony. That's why Jefferson remarked in a letter written in 1787:

god forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. the people cannot be all, & always, well informed. the past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it's natural manure.

That's what I'm thinking about on this two hundred and thirtieth anniversary of Mr. Jefferson's more famous bit of prose.