The Margin of Freedom

The fourth of July that we celebrate on Sunday is a holiday of massive proportions. We celebrate it with flags and bunting, parades and speeches, family gatherings and cook-outs. We listen to band music and we close the day with a display of fireworks as large as our municipal budgets or private philanthropy will allow.

The only incongruity of our American celebration is the ever increasing popularity of the 1812 overture as the climax of the day. I will never understand why we should use a Russian celebration of a victory over our French allies, unless it is reduced simply to the fact that we Americans like noise no matter who produces it! The more of it, the bigger, the louder, the better!

As I have watched this week's senate hearings on Elena Kagan, a Jewish woman from New York City, nominated by our first African-American president, to be the fourth woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, I was reminded that we have much to celebrate. I was also reminded of something that the great Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall often said: that, though a great document, the constitution has some serious flaws in it.

The constitution was flawed in its inception because it accepted the universal and unacceptable reality of slavery, thus postponing what it would take much blood and many years to address, if nor resolve. Women were not seen as full citizens. The document sacrificed moral principles for self interest. When the founding fathers talked about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in 1787, they did not have in mind a majority of America's citizens. It was only through amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformations that we have come to know the freedom we enjoy today.

So we must remain vigilant to protect our political liberty and national independence and work toward perfecting our union. But liberty can lead to license and our independence to godless arrogance. We, who are a people of faith, understand that in addition to political freedom the soul of humankind cries out for spiritual freedom.

A nation is no better than her people. The mere existence of a charter or a constitution does not make us great. Just having a flag, an army and a navy does not equal excellence. Along with our political freedom we must be spiritually free, free from profane materialism, free from vulgar sensuality, free from childish and psychopathic racism, free from injustice, free from arrogance and contempt for the weak and the powerless.