Sub Terra Vita: Chronicle #6: Patriotic Challenge, Independence Day 2015

Sub Terra Vita

By Tim Krenz

Chronicle #6: Patriotic Challenge, Independence Day 2015

“Our country – In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong.” ¹

–Commodore Stephen Decatur, April 1816

As we celebrate this and every Independence Day, the quote above might provide some reflective context as to the meaning of America in the world, both in the early Republic and today. The speaker making a toast, US Navy Captain Stephen Decatur, has no peer in our history for his physical and moral courage, audacity in battle, or his daring exploits. Decatur's toast came at a time when the United States had reconfirmed its independence in a second war with Great Britain (1812-1814). He captures a sentiment in an age when citizens of the country had a gratitude for having an independent republic. Elsewhere, a world existed where kings and emperors ruled, whether or not enlightened, over the bodies and minds of their subject and subjugated men and women.

America's founding as independent states in 1776 by the Declaration that freed the new country from England's king and his parliament, promoted a truly revolutionary idea. That idea took root and germinated culturally in the British colonies on America's Atlantic coast since 1763: That people so agreeing to their own consent, chose to live without a monarch or a false aristocracy that only ruled by some divine privilege of birth or force of arms; and, secondly, that government and the whole society could run its affairs and manage its own national interests by the merits and the ability of each and everyone them, as individuals and by working together.

In the Old World way of government, kings and queens held the sovereign power, keeping all others in moral bondage and physical servitude to their law. In the new United States, every person maintained the sovereignty within themselves, and they also exercised the sovereignty of the government as a group owning their own individual property, their own minds, and their own persons. Not even the enlightened Dutch republic had gone as far in granting these powers to people when gaining its independence from Spain one century before 1776.

As a consequence of this gift of liberty, sovereignty in the people brings consequences. We must always remember, first, that our national interests has collective purpose, not individual nor corporate; and not a means for profit nor a tool of revenge. Sovereignty must have justice at its end, and it must serve the interest of all, for moral reasons, not expedient. We have only one country. We all live in it, and have to get along with ourselves and our world.

We live in a dangerous time, a nuclear-age of unrealized horrors if we make slim-margins of error. All US citizens have rights and stakes in this. Good prevails in the world, in the end, only if the intent aims to do good, and aims to cause no harm nor theft of others, of their property, their dignity, or their lives. America has done great good in the world, and made some honest mistakes. It has even allowed scoundrels to lead it astray, at great defeat to the national interests. Let us reflect, let's get things right, for us in the world, since normal people still have it in their hands to make things right, and successful. Challenge: How can your voice become relevant and positive, and make the “home” a better foundation for a better world depending on your vote? Reflect on July the fourth.

1A Dictionary of Quotations (2010), Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, p. 70, Wikiquotes