Happy Birthday America!

July 4th is the day our country as an allied group of colonies in North America under the direction of the Continental Congress declared its independence in 1776 from its political parent, the Empire of the United Kingdom of the British Isles. Our flag receives symbolic honor on this day. We are effectively celebrating and giving thanks for our national government, which is a federal system and a form of centralized government. We are not a confederacy. We aspire to the Perfect Union. The Federal Government of the United States of America was created by unanimous vote by member states in 1787, after the abysmal failure of decentralized government under the now defunct Articles of Confederation. Our Founding Fathers realized that for our country to properly function as a democracy, we needed to have a strong national government. The individual states could not effectively share out the responsibilities of maintaining a democratic government. Different states had wayward interests that did not benefit the greater good. Our Federal Government has proven its value time and time again as an institutional instrument which preserves our democracy against forces that would unravel its democratic principles. Usually people think of this in terms of the wars we have fought to preserve our country from external enemies, such as the War of 1812 or World War II. But our centralized form of government has an equal responsibility to oppose political forces which would undermine the principles of our democracy from within. There have been regions of the country that at various times have sought to flout these principles through localized political power. When strong and effective executive leadership has exercised its will in the name of our Federal Government, these destructive deviations have been corrected. The most famous example was President Lincoln's military action against seceding states who wished to have unlimited rights to extend and expand the practice and institution of slavery. What was at stake was the democratic principle of fair compensation for labor contributed by free citizens of the United States in support of all legal business endeavors. Democracy could not survive if slave labor gained the upper hand in terms of the utilization of labor in the United States. Lincoln struck a blow in support of monetarily-compensated labor by the working people of our nation, an executive action otherwise known as the American Civil War. Later Teddy Roosevelt in the first term of his office as president intervened against greedy coal barons who refused to negotiate a settlement with striking coal miners whose working conditions and lack or remunerative compensation was dire. He also went on to promote and pass a host of fair labor laws, including the eight hour work day and the prohibition of child labor. Jumping ahead to the middle of the twentieth century, Presidents Eisenhower and then later Lyndon Johnson intervened against violations of the citizens' rights of African Americans in the South, who were denied equal and open access to integrated public education, to public restrooms, to restaurants, to public transportation, and to the ballot box itself. So, I celebrate and honor our flag and the centralized government for which it stands. If we were a confederacy, we would not be a democracy, because localized political interests would have subverted our democratic rights. Though our central government has sometimes been piloted by those who have cynically acted as termites to weaken it from within, it remains the most powerful mechanism for which ethnic minorities and the socioeconomic majority of working people have recourse to defend their rights against powerful elite groups who do not respect the democratic principles upon which our nation was built. Our central national government with its superior legal and fiscal clout is also responsible for the most democratically sustaining institutions of social welfare, such as medicare, high standards of public education, unemployment compensation, social security, and the regulation of clean air, safe drinking water and unpolluted soil (hail the EPA!). The national government also helps support and inspire complementary state services that uphold the fabric of socioeconomic stability for working people. States whose leadership represents narrow interests have often been denied federal funds unless they cooperate with programs of broad-based support for its population. So if you belong to a racial or religious minority, or are a woman, or are a working person, or a person who has lost his job, or a retired person, or a person suffering from endemic poverty, or a person who cannot afford to send your children to a private school, you can thank the ability of your national central government to intervene on your behalf (by military enforcement if necessary) against those who would deny you the human and civil rights, without which our democracy would evaporate. We are a nation that believes in a Constitutionally-supported system of checks and balances to preserve just government. Let us not forget the import role the Executive Branch plays in preserving the liberty and well-being of our vulnerable regular citizens by placing a check against the terror, intimidation and legal chicanery of the mighty and their minions. Hail to America's quest for the Perfect Union!