Why do we celebrate Independence Day and not Constitution Day?
Some thoughts from 2020:
Independence Day
Maybe it is just me, but the recent unrest about the systemic racism still afflicting our country and the dearth of mass celebrations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, have inspired a more introspective view of Independence Day.
We don’t think enough about it, but we aren’t celebrating the day our country was founded, our flag adopted, our Constitution written, or even our independence won. We are celebrating the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Most of the Declaration is devoted to giving reasons why the colonies felt justified in dissolving our “political bands” with Great Britain. However, the reasons are given in a philosophical context that is remarkable. At a time when most countries were ruled by people who claimed to do it by divine right, or simply did it by force, our Declaration set out a statement of purpose and justification:
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Today we attack the members of the Constitutional Convention for being slave holders, for excluding women, for supporting genocide against native people. Maybe for them it was self-evident that “all men” actually meant “all white property-owning men,” but because they wrote and approved “all men” we have foundational grounds for working toward a fair and just society.
You know, after stating that we have unalienable rights and identifying “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” as three of them, the Declaration says, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Everything after that is just working out the details.
Among those details, to me, right now: it makes sense that we should take down, modify, even destroy statues and monuments to men who led armies against the United States in support of slavery. I find it a little more problematic to destroy or defile a statue that was created to honor some other achievement, but happens to portray a man who owned slaves or massacred Native Americans.
But on the Fourth of July we aren’t celebrating the men or their deeds, we are celebrating their words, their ideas.
All are equal.
All have unalienable rights.
Among the rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The purpose of governments is to secure the rights of the governed.
Governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. If those problematic white men of privilege had not pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the ideals where would we be?
Some remarks presented in 2026
Constitution Day Welcome
Welcome, all. I’m Jeff Lyons, President of Spirits Alive, the friends of Eastern Cemetery. This year the organization marks 20 years of existence – we’re almost old enough to vote. We’ve cleaned and documented thousands of gravestones. Through the work of Spirits Alive’s historian Ron Romano, we’ve identified segregated sections of the cemetery and identified nearly 300 Black Portlanders buried in them, many in unmarked graves. Today we meet to honor them in a simple ceremony. We will say their names.
Our ceremony today raises issues of identity, agency, and citizenship. Some whose names we’ll say fought for freedom, for justice, for suffrage, for equality, some fought for mere survival.
The Neuroscientist David M. Eagleman said,
“There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.”
Today we have in some way brought life to those whose names we read, we have welcomed them, honored them, claimed them as ours. Now, just as they sought to live lives of dignity, meaning, citizenship, and service, it is for us to carry that spirit out into the community, the nation, and the world.
Thank you all.
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