Happy Independence Day

This seemed like the best way to celebrate:

More photos of me looking bewildered after the jump.

For the curious, my quotation is from Jefferson’s first inaugural address:

Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Now go read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Then read Frederick Douglas’s chilling, What to the slave is the Fourth of July?, which has these still beautiful words in its final paragraph:

I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind.

posted by Nicholas ⋅ tagged america, civil liberties, politics

3 responses to “Happy Independence Day”

1. July 5th, 2007 at 4:39 pm , Cafegirl says:
   

   It did my heart good to see your July 4th signs and to read the quotation from Frederick Douglass. Douglass made me think of Seamus Heaney’s poem “The Cure at Troy” — specifically these lines:

   Human beings suffer,
   they torture one another,
   they get hurt and get hard.
   No poem or play or song
   can fully right a wrong
   inflicted or endured.

   [and then this beautiful and needed stanza: ]

   History says, Don’t hope
   on this side of the grave.
   But then, once in a lifetime
   the longed for tidal wave
   of justice can rise up,
   and hope and history rhyme.

2. July 18th, 2007 at 3:40 pm , amyb says:
   

   nick, what happened to the postings?

3. July 18th, 2007 at 7:57 pm , Nicholas says:
   

   Sorry, I’ve been a bum and things have been hectic. More will come shortly..