Congratulations! It's a representative democracy!

Well, it's that time of year again: time to cook some dead animals over open flames, drink beer, and then maybe watch some things blow up in the sky.

It's been a rough year for you, America. That's inevitable, I suppose, when you're a nation founded on the idea that every man has the right to stand up and speak his mind, and every man has the right to seek his own fortune. Now don't get me wrong - a dictatorship might look tidier, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Recently I've been reading a bit about America's western expansion. An odd time in our history, wasn't it? On one hand, it was a time of pure possibility: there was a hell of a lot of country out there, and if you could gather your things up and get a horse, well - go find your slice of it! But at the same time, amidst all this passion and hope and enthusiasm, it was at best overlooked that there were already people living there; at worst they were forcibly relocated, starved out (intentionally or not), or just plain killed.

So we've kind of always been a nation of mixed messages - we are all Americans! every man for himself! - and this year has been no different. Right now, of course, one of the biggest stories is the BP oil spill in the Gulf, which is the largest accidental oil spill in history and unquestionably the worst environmental disaster in American history and quite likely in the world. We've got people drawing Hitler mustaches on pictures of the first non-white president (which is...uh, logically questionable), shouting that we can't possibly offer some sort of state-run health insurance (other than Medicare, Medicaid, the Indian Health Service, the VA, health care for active-duty military members and their dependents and SCHIP), and pulling over brown-skinned people and asking for their papers (not to mention what happens if you're a different shade of brown and try to get on an airplane). And our economy, of course, is still somewhere south of awful, with no meaningful recover on the immediate horizon.

So, yeah, a rough year. And that's part of why I tend to have a kind of hard time with the 4th of July as it's celebrated. Celebrate our freedom, sure. Commemorate both the political minds who had the audacity to declare "Sorry, George, we're a free and independent nation" and those who fought on the ground for it. And enjoy and use that freedom that people fought for: have fun, take a day off work, say what's on your mind. But don't forget that we're not perfect, and to claim we are leads down a dangerous road.

And yeah, we've got some good stuff going for us. We've got a non-white president, and no matter what: we've got the freedom to draw a Hitler mustache on a picture of him, and we've got the freedom to tell the mustache-drawers that their thoughts are moronic. And when it comes down to it, today is a holiday because 234 years ago, a group of men sat down and said, "Our government has failed us, so we no longer recognize them as our government. We tried to reconcile things peacefully, and that didn't work, so we're taking matters into our own hands." No colony had ever declared themselves to be an independent state before, and certainly no rag-tag band of thrown-together militias had ever dreamt of successfully taking on the British forces. But they did it and - god almighty, it worked. I grew up less than ten miles from where Mr. Jefferson took Mr. Locke's philosophy and turned it into something real, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

But here's my other problem with celebrating the 4th of July the way we do: when those 56 men signed that piece of paper, they were committing treason and effectively declaring war against the greatest military force in the world. When George Washington had the Declaration read to his troops in New York, there were British forces camped within sight. Imagine that: you're a soldier in the Continental Army in 1776 - which quite possibly means you were no more than a teenager. There you are, in a scruffy uniform, camped in the oppressive New England summer in New York, and you can see the greatest military force in the world, right there, waiting. And then here comes your general, and he reads out a document that declares that this is not some little uprising, and this will not be just a series of small skirmishes. This is war, and not just that but a war of ideas. This is about liberty and freedom and self-determination; this is about the fact that we will not yield to your tyranny.

And then the British responded: we will not leave. We do not accept your declaration.

And so they fought. 25,000 American soldiers died. 20,000 British sailors died. 7,500 Germans died. Some of those soldiers died in combat. More of them died from illness - from cold, from starvation, from scurvy and smallpox and pneumonia and everything else that thrives in big groups living in close quarters, in the cold, with no clean water, under tremendous stress. Over fifty thousand people - almost entirely men, mostly young - dead. Because of what was written on a piece of paper and signed on July 4th.

Was it worth it? As much as a death in war can be worth anything, absolutely. Had those men not died we would have no concept of political freedom like we do today; the closest anyone had come was promising limited rights to the rich elite, via the Magna Carta. If ever there was a war which made the future better, it was the Revolutionary War. But it was still a war. Young men still died. Families were still torn apart. Tens of thousands of lives were shattered.

So - keep that in mind. Enjoy what you have and celebrate that you have it. Take a look at the actual Declaration - it's truly a masterpiece and well worth reading. And take a moment, just a few seconds even, to remember that this day commemorates not just freedom, but a war. That American independence did not just happen; the British were in no rush to let it be taken. Maybe they fought because they truly believed in American independence, in that je ne sais quois that is America and not Britain. Or maybe they just knew they were asked to fight, so they did. Or maybe they were pressed into service. Or they were simply young and looking for something to do. It doesn't matter why, because in the end, they either lived, or they died. That's worth remembering, even now.