A Facebook group called The United States of America let members (I am a member and usually glad to be) know yesterday there were only two more days until our nation’s 233rd birthday. I posted a comment suggesting that July 4 is NOT our nation’s birthday. Here’s why.
The Declaration of Independence — which I just heard read aloud on WUIS public radio, and enjoyed every word — is no more a birth announcement than I was a bouncing baby boy newborn when my dad smiled at my mother on their January 2 anniversary in 1947 and she smiled back. That date and mutual smiles took place 14 years affer what I call The Birthing Sanction. I’m guessing that’s how they spent part of their anniversary because I came along nine months and three days later.
The Birthing Sanction for Mom and Dad was signed in Macon, Georgia, January 2, 1933 when they signed their marriage certificate, though from a strictly civil perspective, the sanction was the document they signed at the county courthouse the year before, which gave them “permission” to be married. They were healthy, in love, and the blood was good.
The bad blood would evolve in the course of the next 36 years.
In a time long ago in a land that remains under our feet today, The Birthing Sanction created by two signatures on a marriage certificate gave legitimacy to the procreated natural and arbitrated consequences of three children that came starting in 1935 with my sister Dorothy, continued in 1947 with my arrival and ended in 1949 with my brother Bill. Signing The Birthing Sanction was what “Good Christians” did before getting together in passionus maximus.
Today The Birthing Sanction has gone the way of secret decoder rings and S&H Green Stamps. You may not have noticed but on July 3, 2009, all that’s needed for birthing sanction are two smiling 15 year olds with half an hour to kill before Mom and Dad get home from work. This is universally so, a modern legitimacy sanctioned by Republicans, Democrats and “stop bothering MEs.” Point is that in 1933, the signatures on that long-lost piece of paper legitimized what was two people in love decided to share: their lives as free Americans living together for the rest of their lives . . . . . or until 1969 when they signed their own “declaration of independence” in divorce court.
The Declaration of you know what did not birth the United States of America, and it’s silly to imagine it did. The patriots came together as a name, but they did not come together as a nation. The Birthing Sanction they signed on July 4 did not make a baby nation, but it allowed brave men and women united in common passion (though women would not vote for more than a hundred years hence) to state for the historical record why they would no longer be unfairly subjugated by the Crown of England. The Declaration of Independence was the cornerstone laid on a foundation of ideals for the betterment of humanity (as they understood humanity at the time) living together in 13 different statess. It would not contribute one brick to the institution erected by the arduous and bloody process that created the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the many amendments legitimately added after that. The Declaration of Independence was not a Birth Certificate.
It’s fitting that we pause to consider what we would be today as a part of the world’s humanity if brave patriots had not dedicated their lives and fortunes to the hope that we would live independent and free of subjugation from London. There are many patriots in the USA today who voice dismay over the subjugation of our nation’s legal citizens from Washington . . . from state capitals. . . . county boards . . . regional taxing authorities. . . our spouses. . . significant others. . . our kitties and the infernal damned clock. This is as it should be. We are American. It’s okay.
Without the Declaration of Independence, we would
1. have to eat kidney pie;
2. promise obedience to a wonderful woman who lives in a palace;
3. lift a bonnet to check the oil;
4. live with Boy George;
5. say our weight in ”stone”;
6. loathe the Scots and the Irish, whom, in my opinion, are very excellent people;
7. drive on the wrong side of the car;
8. swing like a pendulum do;
9. pay Value Added Taxes when we buy our liquor.
10. speak English!
Thank goodness for the Declaration of Independence and thanks to the citizens of our former adversary who stand with their former colonies today as allies in the cause of freedom for the world’s vast humanity!
Live long . . . . . . and proper.
