on the eve of our national holiday

Last night I went to a summer event organized around patriotic music and the flag, a mostly enjoyable evening that included fireworks and a presentation, jokingly described by the conductor, as that great American masterpiece, The 1812 Overture, including cannon shots. If the Japanese can adopt Beethoven's Ninth, why can't we identify with a Russian's music?

I find being outside, eating and chatting with friends or colleagues is a relaxing, almost reassuring ritual. That's what we do on the Fourth.

Last night, veterans of America's armed forces were honored and saluted. I sat by an older gentleman, of my father's generation, who stood up when the Marine Hymn was played. He was a tough looking fellow, with close cut hair, tanned and powerful arms, a bit hard of hearing. His wife, sitting close by, nudged him to stand.

As the music played, there were other veterans standing up as well, amid the sea of picnickers and lawnchair sitters. I noticed that as he looked around the old Marine took a thick grubby finger and gently stabbed at a tear, wiping it away from his eye.

He sat down and put his arm around his wife, and I immediately had a number of questions in my head, where did he fight, in which war, was he thinking of friends who had died then or more recently? There were silences between him and his wife, yet a certain delicate closeness, too. I wondered what their voices sounded like, what were the stories of their lives.

As the patriotic music continued, including a much too puffed up reading of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address -- the words don't need to be milked, nor made to sound like crashing oratory. Their beauty and power is in their simplicity, their hope and in the context of a horrid war. I wish more readers would let the text speak, a minor quibble but one that often bugs me.

And then came the one song that I find troublesome, Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA. I really detest that song. As a Christian, I am amazed at those who presume that God has identified with this country over others. It's a common human assumption, but theologically not true. And then the jerky sentiment of it, we're the best.

If you flit around political blogs, one of the common arguments against people who are upset about the president or his leadership related to Iraq is that these liberals hate America and are self-loathing of the culture and people who nurtured them.

A few years ago, I attended on the Fourth weekend the swearing-in of naturalized citizens. It was perhaps the most moving patriotic event that I've ever witnessed. There were rich people and there were poor people. Every corner of the world was represented, every accent possible, every hope put forth that this was a good place to choose to live and raise a family.

We are a country of self-selected folk, people who chose to come here, outsiders in other countries, leaving behind stuff, coming here for a chance or a dream or a need. Yes, we're hucksters, easily excited, confounded by complexities of other cultures, loud, brash, impatient. This is a self-made country based on ideals, based on human restlessness, on the idea that it is ok to recreate one's self as something different. It is no coincidence that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are a part of our national identification.

I am proud and amused and hopeful about such a place.

I am terribly proud that America tries, from time to time, to bring about realities to somewhat match those words from our Declaration of Independence. We have made and continue to make an effort through a civil war, through protests, through litigation, through legislative initiative to make this a place of equality and justice. Not always. Not for everybody. But we work on it. And I am proud that we have at times been a beacon for folk in other countries who respected our values as a democracy.

Which brings me to this Fourth of July.

I cringe at the pictures of the tortured prisoners in Iraq. Placed in perspective of the memo justifying cruelty and torture, as well as the moral sermon of the Supreme Court reminding this president that he cannot make up powers or take away basic legal rights, and I feel sad and angry at what has been done in our name.

If our defense is that these acts do not begin to match the cruelty of Sadaam or his sons then we are some other country than the one I grew up in. This is not how we function or act. And Sadaam is not the standard by which we hold ourselves. Someday our country may have to act to stop a madman with WMDs, but our credibility in doing so has been wasted by these inept, cruel and stupid acts. Colin Powell told the president prior to the invasion that if he carried it out, Iraq was his. He had to take responsibility for it, and that if he broke it, Iraq was still his. By not providing security at the beginning, by assuming that our good intentions were enough, by downplaying the need for more troops at the beginning, and frankly, by emphasizing facts and a point a view that were not what they said, this administration has done damage to America, and to the world. We are in a pickle.

I think about the latest cynical attempt to re-write the Constitution as an attempt to stop all dialogue about same-sex couples and their marriages. If you look at American presidents reacting to civil rights pressures from FDR to Kennedy, you see reluctance, caution, but never a cutting off constitutionally of equal rights. To see brazen manipulation of race, you have to go the South and look at politicians who were demagogues, ala George Wallace of Alabama or Ross Barnett of Mississippi. George W. Bush is following in their footsteps, particularly in how he is attacking same sex marriages.

After the clanging and celebration of 1812 Overture ended, we heard Sousa marches while watching fireworks overhead. The best Fourths for me have been sitting out under the skies, watching a local fireworks presentation. I remember one in Lone Oak, Iowa one year back in the 70s, and one in Sonoma, California in the 1980s. Families, people, grouped together, watching flashing lights in the summer sky, thrilled and relaxed, free for a moment to laugh and say ooh or ah in the burst of dandelion-like sparks.

Where are we going in this next election? I have no idea, but I hope that this Fourth will provide an opportunity for us as a country to see ourselves more critically. Nothing self-loathing about that.