Despite the critiques and clashes on the global stage, America still has what most if not all other nations lack: an abiding commitment to individual rights and freedoms. That ideal remains its most enviable trait.
At myriad points throughout its history, these freedoms, outlined in the Bill of Rights, run up against various elements of the regulated social order. This became especially evident in the first half of the 20th century, when the industrial revolution and other economic changes created strains that needed addressing.
Poverty amid the working class led to wage regulation; the elderly got Social Security and, later, Medicare. Population increases led to an environmental-protection ethic and other efforts to mitigate the human impacts on resources. The list goes on.
But protection of freedom remains the touchstone to which Americans always return. In cities and state houses as well as on Capitol Hill, laws seek accommodations for a more cohesive society, but these always get put on the scale with individual rights, to strike some kind of balance.
This process is messy, combative and never-ending. The war on drugs, the fight over gun rights, the uproar over the influence of money in politics, all of these conflicts exemplify the push-and-pull nature of a living democracy.
The fight over the Affordable Care Act was a prime example of this tension. Advocates for the law, who won a key victory before the U.S. Supreme Court in recent weeks, argued rightly that too many people lacked access to the health care system, which was a principal driver of the law. Opponents cringed at the way government sought to manage the largely private health care providers and insurers, as well as mandate that everyone be insured.
And in that same week, the pendulum swung the other way. The legalization of same-sex marriage can be counted as a triumph of individual freedom. Many opponents debating the issue wouldn’t describe it in those terms, citing instead the value of adhering to tradition, both civil and religious.
But the freedom to live life on one’s own terms is precisely the reason the earliest Americans sought out a new land and set down that ideal in the founding documents of the nation.
They wouldn’t have thought of same-sex marriage as a goal to pursue, but they wouldn’t have envisioned a world without slavery, either, or one in which women had rights equal to men.
That is the power of the Bill of Rights. We all may fight over them, and argue about what should and should not qualify as a right, in the struggle to find some compromise that allows this crazy-quilt of a republic to endure.
But endure it does, because of our right to meet in the public square — whether that’s in the conventional halls of power or through communication channels such as social media.
Those serious conversations will resume after the weekend. But today, as families meet for barbecues and to enjoy each other’s company, as friends and strangers alike watch the fireworks of this annual celebration, Americans should cherish this annual occasion to revel in a sense of unity.
For all its travails, there is still no country like the U.S.A.
