I really don't want any post about the Fourth of July to get political. I'm well aware that current public polling about the holiday is gloomy:
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll out this month, a plurality of Democrats – 42 percent – say that Independence Day is about “friends and family time,” compared to only 24 percent who say that the holiday is about “celebrating America.” Among Republicans, meanwhile, 65 percent say the holiday is about celebrating America, while 23 percent say it’s about friends and family.
The same poll also asked whether respondents would display an American Flag this July 4. Just 27 percent of Democrats said yes, compared to 64 percent of Republicans. When that same question was asked in July 2001, 68 percent of Republicans and 65 percent of Democrats said they would display the flag.
But perhaps the most astonishing finding on the left’s patriotic collapse is that more than half of Democrats don’t even want to live in America.
or to put it another way:
"Happy Treason Day" is a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek nod to U.S. Independence Day! It’s all about playfully reminding our British friends that the Founding Fathers technically committed treason when they signed the Declaration of Independence.
That got me thinking back to the Bicentennial in 1976. History.com looked back to see how it differs from today. I especially enjoyed this section:
International Recognition
Two official state visits took place during the Bicentennial celebrations, according to the Ford Presidential Museum. French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and his wife, Anne-Aymone, visited in May. In July, Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II toured several states, including attending a formal state dinner in Philadelphia.
“We are deeply grateful for having been invited to visit the United States in the main week of your bicentennial,” the queen said during the event. “After all, nobody can say that what happened on the Fourth of July 1776 was not very much a bilateral affair between us.”
During the visit, she presented the country with the Bicentennial Bell on behalf of Britain.
While I have seen tee shirts with Queen Elizabeth and the "Happy Treason Day" meme, this updating will probably soon appear on a shirt.
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For a look further back to 1912, Project Gutenberg has preserved several of the books in the series by Robert Haven Schauffler called Our American Holidays. At the start of the anthology, Independence Day; its celebration, spirit and significance as related in prose and verse readers are presented with a preface that emphasizes the importance of Independence Day as America's national holiday and critiques how it has been traditionally celebrated with meaningless noise and injury. Schauffler advocates for a more meaningful observance that honors the holiday's true historical significance. While no source other than the author's name is given, I appreciate the book's opening by Viscount James Bryce to the section called "Spirit and Significance." (He was the British ambassador to the United States from 1907 to 1913. Wikipedia notes he "was very efficient in strengthening Anglo-American ties and friendship.")
ENGLAND AND AMERICA
This is a memorable day to Englishmen as well as to Americans. It is to us a day both of regret and of rejoicing: of regret at the severance of the political connection which bound the two branches of our race together, and of regret even more for the unhappy errors which brought that severance about, and the unhappy strife by which the memory of it was embittered. But it is also a day of rejoicing, for it is the birthday of the eldest daughter of England—the day when a new nation, sprung from our own, first took its independent place in the world. And now with the progress of time, rejoicing has prevailed over regret, and we in England can at length join heartily with you in celebrating the beginning of your national life. All sense of bitterness has passed away, and been replaced by sympathy with all which this anniversary means to an American heart.
England and America now understand one another far better than they ever did before. In 1776 there was on one side a monarch and a small ruling caste, on the other side a people. Now our government can no longer misrepresent the nation, and across the ocean a people speaks to a people. We have both come, and that most notably within recent months, to perceive that all over the world the interests of America and of England are substantially the same.
The sense of our underlying unity over against the other races and forms of civilization has been a potent force in drawing us together. It is said that the Fourth of July is a day of happy augury for mankind. This is true because on that day America entered on a course and proclaimed principles of government which have been of profound significance for mankind. Many nations have had a career of conquest and of civilizing dominion: but to make an immense people prosperous, happy, and free is a nobler and grander achievement than the most brilliant conquests and the widest dominion.
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I'm sure that both Schauffler and Bryce would be appalled with the present opinions found in the Reuters/Ipsos poll opening today's look at the Fourth of July during America 250.
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