How, and With Whom, Will You Celebrate this July 4th

Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning. 

Four weeks from today will mark 250 years since the formal adoption (not the signing, as commonly believed) by the Continental Congress of “the unanimous declaration of the thirteen united States of America.”

Thus began a series of cataclysmic events that resulted, this year, in a celebration of the world’s oldest democracy. 

Our democracy’s founding documents don’t center on governance, but on the rejection of it: “To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” the Declaration reads. “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.”

If it is the case that a people can overthrow their government, then it must follow that there is a unit of social order more powerful than government.

Indeed, our entire project is premised on empowering that unit of social order, which has more natural strength than any government or aristocracy or oligarchy: the family. We can talk about social institutions, like the church or one’s neighborhood, as sources of morality and cohesion, and that’s partially true. But, like atoms that together comprise a molecule, the family unit is the foundational building block of those institutions.

As former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (who is still sharing his views with the world despite a terminal cancer diagnosis) wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month, “Cultural change starts at home and then moves out to neighborhoods, communities, and institutions.”

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Next month will feature mesmerizing events across the country. 

New York City will drop the ball on July 4th eve – the first time in history it has done so outside of New Year’s Eve – and massive naval vessels will float under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

Philadelphia will feature not one but six days of fireworks, along with the burial of a time capsule to be opened 250 years from now, in 2276. 

Air Force jets and army tanks will no doubt thunder across Washington, DC.

And communities across North Carolina will host parades and reenactments and fireworks displays.

But here’s the truth: The fireworks are a backdrop; the tanks and tall ships – a theater. What actually constitutes the republic on July 4th – what the founders were, in the deepest sense, fighting to protect – is the family gathered on a blanket in the grass, any grass anywhere, watching the sky light up together.

The Declaration’s signers were men with wives, children, farms, and communities. They were protecting something specific and close to home. The grand architecture of self-governance they designed was a vessel for ordinary life – for raising children, keeping traditions, the passing values from one generation to the next.

Sasse is right that cultural change starts at home. Cultural continuity does, too. The 250-year run of this republic – unmatched in the world – has been sustained by millions of anonymous families who, generation after generation, told their children what it meant to be American. They did this around dinner tables and on front porches – anywhere, really, so long as they were together. 

So by all means, watch the fireworks next month. Make the trip to Philadelphia or New York or Washington if you’d like. Marvel at the tall ships and the jets overhead. These things are worth celebrating.

But the most patriotic manifestation of the festivities is to celebrate them with the people you love, in the place where you feel most at home. Whether that’s in Washington, DC, or on Main St. in your town with a kid, or grandkid, on your shoulders. Because, in the end, that’s what this whole experiment is for.