No bravery required this July 4th

You’re going to see this lie a million times in the next few days. I encourage you to ignore it.

You know what I’m talking about. It will be a post with an American Flag or a bald eagle or a picture of Mt. Suribachi, or some other patriotic image, with the same false claim: Land of the free, because of the brave. It’s a shout-out to the military and, while my respect for our Armed Forces is deep and resolute, the military isn’t the reason we’re the land of the free.

Almost to the contrary, this is the land of the free because of the unassuming, the quiet, the principled and the courteous, the people who preserve our system by simply by accepting and defending its basis in fairness, flexibility, and majority rule.  

This country is the land of the free because we all agreed to think of democracy like a sport, with rules and winners and losers…and getting together for drinks after the game. And we agreed—or at least most of us agreed—that we’d abide by the rules and accept the outcomes because that’s the way life works. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, and, of course, there’s always next year.

And there has always been next year for more than two centuries, which is a truly monumental achievement; even more monumental, in fact, because we didn’t ask for help from the military. As Ben Franklin told Mrs. Powel, we have, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Somehow, across nearly 250 years of mostly civil discourse, we’ve kept it without sending in the troops. 

We debated our neighbors and tried to sway them to see things our way, but we accepted the will of the majority whether we won or lost. We went to the polls and cast our ballots and either rejoiced or licked our wounds when it was over, and then we went back to our lives as if there was more to this world than politics. (Pro tip: There is more to this world than politics.)

It’s an incredible leap of faith and civility to accept the will of the majority when you know the majority is a raving mob of idiots. It’s a magnificent display of humanity to recognize the failings of both your opponents and your compatriots, while according them equal honor as fellow citizens.

It’s also an everyday thing, a constant that has sustained our freedoms more consistently and more successfully than any military intervention. Because, it’s such an everyday thing, we can forget it’s there for us to preserve, protect and defend it as if it were our birthright and our legacy. Which, of course, it is.

And it’s not the military that preserves that legacy. In fact, it’s the opposite. If we need the military to get involved, we have relinquished the treasure that was passed on to our care and must be passed on again through our love of the sport known as democratic government.

Protecting our legacy is getting tougher and tougher, largely because the sportsmanship ethos is fraying under the weight of Knute Rockne acolytes. The threat to our national cohesion is obvious and constant, with seemingly little awareness of the precious gift we’re squandering. And, of course, we won’t be able to replace it when its gone.  

We’ve called on our military only a handful of times to truly defend our freedoms, both overseas and across the Mason-Dixon line, and we can all be grateful for their successes on our behalf. Mostly, though, this is the land of the free because of everyday people who simply decided to make it so. Wishing all of them, all of us, the awareness and commitment, maybe even the bravery, to keep making it so this year and beyond.

GBA.

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