It is the 250th Independence Day…
I did try to get into the spirit of this milestone anniversary. But the Trumpies are doing their level best to quash any patriotic fervor. Have you seen what they consider celebratory? I’ve lost count of the insults and affronts — from a cage fight on the White House lawn to some weirdo masturbating in an Uncle Sam costume to some asshole debating the Salem Witch Trials with a young girl and claiming, on camera, that the whole debacle would have been better if the Puritans were more organized about prosecution and execution of the supposed witches. (Never mind that none of them were actual witches…) In any case, it’s a mockery of celebration…
I listened to a few of the 250 to 250 podcasts by Heather Cox Richardson (here’s my favorite), and I reread Thomas Paine. Joanne Freeman almost had me convinced that there are reasons to celebrate, that there is a spirit to celebrate on the Fourth, that “we, the people” is why we celebrate. Which I agree with… though I’m not convinced that the Fourth is celebrating us…
On a practical, if facile, level, I bought a bit of paper flag bunting and set out the remainder of my kids’ bookstore 4th of July décor — which mostly consists of metal stars and vintage toys painted red, white and blue. And I planted some small flags in the pot of mint by the mailbox. But I’m already trying to suppress the urge to box it all away again. Because I just don’t feel it. I’m more of the mind of “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?“…
I suppose I just don’t have any stake in the day’s history. One side came over as indentured servants in the 19th century, several generations after the Declaration was signed. The other arrived by boat from Ireland in the 20th century (escaping the Irish war for independence, by the way). Both sides did very well on these shores… but only because they were Europeans and either married to or daughters of men. Had my father’s ancestors been any darker in skin and curlier in hair, I’d probably not be here because they probably wouldn’t have escaped their indenture. Had my grandmother not been adopted by a powerful Chicago man, I’d not be privileged enough to write this blog… So, for me, to celebrate a group of white guys declaring their right to self-rule feels a bit hollow… Yay for them?…
I mean, how do people who are not white males celebrate this day? I feel like we are celebrating despite its history. I don’t know how even white women work up a breast-full of patriotism — when there are no matriarchs, no Founding Mothers. I’ve gone round and round with my Black family members and Native friends on this. How do we celebrate the 4th? Mostly… the answer has been… we don’t. Because there is nothing granted to us by this day, not even participation in being. Now, over the centuries, all these disparate groups fought and bled to gain a pale semblance of those Declaration rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But we never held the wealth or status to embody those rights. And now, what we’ve fought for and won at dear cost is proven to be no more than paper pretense, as it is being dismantled with ease and unseemly speed under this regime.
I do honor the accomplishments of those struggles to become Americans in America. I honor the building of this country, mostly by people like my indentured ancestors. I feel proud of their work and their tenacity, their refusal to be beaten down and un-personed by the dominant culture. I celebrate all their cultures. Their stories. Their humor and grace. The beautiful color and flavor that they have woven into this land. I owe my life to those people. All Americans do. The very food we eat and the homes we inhabit were made, not by the people who declared themselves free to live and pursue happiness, but by the people who were denied those same rights and were ruled by those upstart oligarchs — rather than a king…
So, there’s that… But a more personal and more philosophical question is this: How do anarchists, people like me who do not believe in the moral justice of centralized rule, whether by king or oligarch, honor the history of this day? How do I celebrate the change of rule when I think ruling itself breeds idiocy and harm?
It has been proven in study after study, in book after book, and in historical application time and time again, that leadership, power over other people, even in minute amounts, thoroughly blinds a human and ruins his judgement (though it is not always a he…). Just being able to dictate, to rule, destroys your ability to rule well. You become convinced of the absolute correctness of your ideas in the face of all evidence to the contrary. You can’t even see the counterfactuals because they can not coexist with your superiority and so, to you, do not exist. In fact, power over others inspires such false confidence that you will believe yourself more meritorious, more intelligent, more cunning — and act accordingly — even when your superiority is as shallow as being selected at random in a sociological study that is expressly looking at how power over others makes you stupid. You will corroborate that thesis every time!
So I don’t believe in ruling, not even a rule of the people and by the people. Or not as it has happened in this people with this particular set of rules…
But maybe it isn’t the Founders and their Declaration that this day honors. Or maybe we can make it otherwise, regardless. As Joanne Freeman claims, this is the day we pledge to each other to continue this project of building a vibrant nation from disparate peoples — most of whom are not recognized by the original Constitution of the United States. Maybe we can self-consciously and unironically forge a new holiday to celebrate the we-ness of being a people united under the pursuit of life. Yes, I know that’s a big ask under the yoke of the oligarchs, but then again, celebrations of that sort are exactly the one path to throwing off the yoke… Celebrating being free is how we attain freedom.
I just don’t think that this we-ness is a nation. A nation implies bloodlines and common ancestry, which we don’t have and which flies directly in the face of everything we-ness stands for, everything the words of the Declaration claim to stand for. A nation is exclusionary and fixed and largely dead. But the Declaration, the fact of our shared story, the welcoming of all to these shores and encouraging them be free, these are living and changeful, dynamic and inclusive and interwoven. No, I don’t believe we are a nation. I don’t believe nations live for centuries. Historically, they consume themselves in their own rigid navel gazing within a generation or two. No, I believe we are a country, a geography, a history of places large and small — but mostly small. In any case, everything of significance in each of our lives is small. And localized. And that’s what I would celebrate. To me, this day is not a salute to one story, to one flag, to one centralized rule. To me this pledge we make to each other is honoring the spirit of place, of each of our places — whenever and wherever we are.
I should note that the Declaration — and especially the later Constitution — the idea of a governance of people, not of divinely ordained and heritable rulers, this was an innovation in Western culture, something new under the sun for Europeans, and a welcome one even if the application of the framework hewed closer to the rule of kings than to general self-determination. This idea, that the we-ness did not need lords, this was not, as many claim, an Enlightenment idea. The Enlightenment was all for shedding divinity, of course, but only so that wealth could rule with a gilded iron fist instead. No, the framing of this country’s legal system owes much more to Native ideas. Representative government, separation of powers, limits to authority, sovereignty resting with the People. This is all from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the participatory democracy that colonists were running up against in their urge to expand westward. (One of the needles that King George stuck into the colonists was an admonishment against taking land from these peoples…)
This confederacy of peoples was not a centralized state of property owners. It was an agreement to wage peace, to get along, to mostly agree, and to send the wisest mediators to council meetings when disagreement arose. There were heritable roles, though even these were vested in the peoples, not individual persons or family lines. There were boundaries, though these were fluid and changing based on needs. There were even outsiders who were not always welcomed, though the history of the Confederacy is one of general expansion by inclusion — without assimilation. There was, however, as is common in most of human history, very little property. And power over was explicitly proscribed. That sort of idiocy was specifically what the League member nations were seeking to expunge from their world. They wanted life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And they were wise enough to recognize that none of those goods are attainable in a rule of greed and might.
If we, the white people, had stuck closer to the Original Instructions I would not be writing today. I would be living my life of liberty and happiness — which would not be a pursuit but a possession, an intrinsic property of being me, a person in this enlightened society. You would not be reading about historical conundrums today. You would be celebrating… just because the sun rose and there is good food to eat. Each day would be worthy of honor. Very few days would be lost to work. Because that is the main difference between these timelines. In a rule of the people for the people, rather than a rule of the people for property-owning peoples, there are no jobs, only daily tasks, each person doing for themselves, not for hire. There is no money. There is no amassing of wealth. There is only satisfaction of needs with your own labors. Which, as you know if you read my blathering, do not take up much of your time or efforts. So every day is at least partly a holiday. Every day is holy…
Of course, if we were living that timeline, there would not be a Fourth of July, but there would be a We, the People. And that, too, would be something to celebrate. And maybe in that timeline, the world would not be as poisoned as it has become through its pursuit of wealth and power. So maybe we’d genuinely want to gather under the stars for a feast. Or a dance. Or storytelling. Or just to be together. (Though probably not for fireworks…) We might have parades and games and theatrics under the Midsummer sun, and we’d feel no need to hide in the cool shade. There might not be air conditioning… but we’d probably not need it. And there would be very little disturbing news from elsewhere, no matter where we lived on this planet. Because we would be a beacon to the rest of the world. Our lives would proclaim “This is how to be free“. And such a vibrant example would be impossible to resist. Even the benighted West would finally awaken to happiness…
But that is not this timeline… and I’m having a hard time feeling celebratory…
Instead, I’m hiding from the heat today. And actually, there isn’t much going on in my part of the world. Most municipalities hold their celebrations around, not on, the Fourth because holiday pay for first responders and security is just not in the budget… Which is significant, I think.
So, here is a repost of a sadly cogent Fourth of July screed. And here’s hoping for a day when all this is irrelevant… A day when it might feel natural and right to celebrate the country we inhabit and daily create… Though the Fourth is probably never going to be that day…
Whose Independence…
It is early July. In my country, we set fire to gunpowder and other explosives wrapped in paper — which are produced almost entirely in extremely hazardous conditions outside of this country — to mimic the actual gunpowder explosions that presumably were the ambient soundscape for the ratification of the language of a document that declared a small group of British colonies independent from the Empire — and specifically from King George and his nasty rules regarding Native autonomy and property rights. It is Independence Day. This is the worst holiday ever created. Even if you leave out the explosions.
I don’t like fireworks. I have a high desert dweller’s bone-deep terror of sparks raining down on dry tinder. I am not fond of loud noises. And I think darkness is time for sleep, especially after the long, miserably hot days of summer. At minimum, I like to be clean and pajamaed by the time it’s dark enough for fireworks displays, not sweating and swatting mosquitos in the sultry heat. Moreover, it’s not much of a show… even in Boston with the Boston Pops playing in time with the explosions. Patriotic music is banal and stars are more sparkly — and they last. But mostly, well… I’ve known people who have been harmed in those fireworks factories. Those wounds are gruesome. And for no better cause than a few seconds of scintillation. Hard to look up and not see the missing limbs and mutilated flesh…
And anyway, what are we celebrating? Getting away from the Empire? By all accounts we didn’t. This country was heavily dependent upon the British Empire until the First World War destroyed much of the EuroWestern order. We followed British rules and bowed to British economics and gave preference to British people in every way. We still think and talk in English no matter the mother tongue of our progenitors. We were second class for so long, we hardly realized that the Empire was crumbling away until it was gone. And we still have quite an inferiority complex when it comes to history and culture.
So maybe we’re celebrating the advent of this country? Perhaps. Except is this one single country? Not particularly. Even when it was just thirteen colonies on the eastern seaboard, there were deep divisions in economic and social structures. There was not and still is not a feeling of nationhood in the United States because there is no nationality. There is no such thing as an ethnic American with a common ancestry and culture, unless you are using that term to name individual groups among the indigenous peoples — who don’t use that term. There was and remains little basis for a national feeling of unity. So what is this country aside from a legal structure? Nothing much. Not much worthy of a birthday bash with explosives and beer and burgers anyway.
Maybe we are celebrating getting away from kings? Maybe if you define the title very narrowly. After the Revolutionary War, we no longer had a single, heritable leader. Instead, we got an oligarchy of those men whose ancestors had appropriated (stolen) the most land and labor, “creating wealth” that they then used to arrogate (steal) power so they could appropriate (steal) more land and labor. They were not called aristocrats, but they were still lords; and their position was still heritable and closed to outsiders.
Okay then… Well, perhaps we’re celebrating the ideas that went into this legal structure? Yeah… probably not. How many people could even name a few of those ideas? And then, of the people who can, how many actually believe in the general application of those ideals?
Still, I’ve got nothing else. So let’s just go with that anyway.
Let’s take “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. That’s something we all can spout off from the Declaration of Independence, right? Is that something to believe in? Something to celebrate? Yes, but… First off, note that we don’t get to have happiness, we are given the opportunity to chase after it. Futilely, by definition, or it wouldn’t remain a pursuit. Even Jefferson recognized that the economy would fall apart if that pursuit was realized by a large segment of the population. Happy people don’t buy things.
Well then, whatever… happiness is nebulous anyway. But life is a pretty solid concept. Do we believe in that? More specifically, did we get a right to life out of the formation of this country? Not a bit of it. The oligarch class bullies the rest of us into believing that they have the right to live as they see fit. Nobody else did or does have that right even in fantasy. Our lives are owned and dictated by the oligarch class. We do their labor; we pay them for the fruits of our labors. And those of us who don’t closely resemble the members of the oligarch class do not even get a right to bodily autonomy. This doesn’t seem to be a good reason for fireworks and a cookout.
So how about that liberty thing? Well, if we’re owned and we owe then we don’t have liberty no matter what our beliefs are on the idea. If our lives can be appropriated or controlled or even snuffed out at any moment for any reason, then we are not free. Most of us are not free. And not only has this been the de facto state for most Americans, it is the necessary state for America. If we were truly free to forge our own paths through life, then this country would implode. The economy would die. The ruling class and all its infrastructure (including things like this blog) would vanish. The fragile thread that binds the United States into one entity ruled by heritable urban elites would snap. There would be no more united even in name. Probably not even much in the way of large states. If there is freedom for the majority, then the minority can’t rule from the center.
And let’s be honest… this country was founded upon slave labor and theft of property. It kept that slave labor and property theft in its Constitution. It still rests on slave labor in all but name and it still resists returning property to the commonwealth. What is the race to the bottom but the absolute necessity of slave wages in this economic structure. If people were free to demand at least wages that could support their pursuit of life and liberty and maybe happiness, then there are no profits. Similarly, if land is held in common to support all life (and liberty and maybe happiness), there is no way to extract private wealth.
And that’s not even considering the market to support the extractive economy. If everyone is pursuing their own lives and liberties — and especially happiness — they are neither going to do labor that makes them miserable — at any wage — nor are they going to pay for things that they can produce themselves — which is most of our needs. Hence the need in capitalism, and especially this country’s version of it, to separate most people from the means to produce for themselves and the freedom to choose what they want to produce. We are the opposite of the land of the free. We are the incarcerated culture. In order for this culture to exist, we are dependent upon a complete lack of our foundational principles for the majority of the people who live under them.
So… We don’t get liberty; we don’t get life; we don’t get happiness — though we are free to chase after happiness throughout our lives. Indeed, we are obligated to do so because that endless pursuit is what feeds our economy, what props up the oligarchs, and what continually co-creates our culture. Whether we believe in the ideals of the Founders preserved in the Declaration of Independence or not, whether we can recite the language or not, whether we even know what we are celebrating today, we get none of that. Instead, we get fireworks and hot dogs.
But what of the oligarchs? Are they free? Are they independent? Are they able to make choices without any recourse to other beings? Well, they like to pretend that’s the case. But it is not. Maybe we need to look at the whole idea of independence. Because, when it comes down to essence, there is no such thing as an independent being, free to do as it chooses without incurring debt to others. There is no independent being that does not incur that debt simply by existing.
I believe that what the oligarchs (including Jefferson) mean and have meant in history when they say independence is irresponsibility. The freedom to take freely and not pay costs. The freedom to not clean up messes. The freedom to not respond, to not care, to not be part of a reciprocal relationship. The freedom to pursue wealth regardless of harm done. The freedom to be self-absorbed and indeed make a virtue of that. It seems to me that what we are celebrating on the 4th of July is the freedom to be an asshole.
This country is based on the idea of the sanctity of property, not life, not even human life (or liberty or happiness). Property rights come before human rights. When slaves ran from the abuse raining down on their bodies, what justification did plantation owners use to successfully prosecute those that facilitated escape? That those slave helpers were depriving the plantation owners of property. Today, what argument is used to successfully fight regulations that deny economic activities that cause harm to a location or population? That corporations are being denied access to potential property gains. They say that protective and common sense regulations restrict their freedom to acquire property. And they win in every court of law (made up of their peers).
See? Assholes.
They stole their property to begin with — taking land from those who lived here and labor from people they forced into slavery — but nobody is allowed to take it away from them even to mitigate harm that they cause in owning it. And there is always harm to mitigate. An economy that is predicated on the sanctity of property over any right is — by definition — causing harm.
But, you say, what if we passed laws to place property rights beneath human and other biosphere rights? Not that the oligarchs will let that happen, but could we do that in theory?
I don’t think so. Because even if a miraculous conversion of the Asshole class led to that economic possibility, is it physically possible to engage in capitalism — the amassing of wealth through production and trade — that does not harm some other being? Not obviously. Because in the real world, what you take without giving back is harming something. Reality is all, 100%, reciprocity — take minimally and then give back at least equitably. Ultimately, it is all flow. What you amass in your life you leave behind, you release it back to the flow of energy and resources and living. You simply can’t take more than you give in a reciprocal relationship. You can’t generate a surplus in a reciprocal relationship. There is no profit if property does not prevail. The flow of reciprocity, the flow of reality, does not allow for property rights if rights to life, liberty and maybe happiness are protected.
Private property rights are a rupture in the material flow, a hole in reality. Hence the need for reams of law and perpetual gaslighting to support this artificial state. To maintain this state against the flow of reality requires endless Sisyphean labor from the professional-managerial class and a constant barrage of propaganda telling us all that we don’t see the discontinuity all around us.
And what does that discontinuity look like?
Consider this: how does a person in a reciprocal relationship share his compensation with the tree he cuts down to sell at market? The tree enabled this labor, correct? The man who cuts the tree is not acting in isolation; he does not independently create a log from nothing. His labor to produce a marketable log is predicated upon the existence of this tree. She deserves compensation. Prior to being cut, she had to grow and add sufficient girth — which, given tree lives, means the tree pre-existed the man by many decades. Or even centuries. How does the man justify taking the life of this tree with no compensation whatsoever? By magically turning the tree into property and thereby granting no rights to her existence. Is this liberty? Not for the tree…
And by extension, not for any being that enables the man. If you follow the web of relationship, the man is bound on all sides. He can take nothing without depriving someone else.
Now, consider this: the tree is not an independent individual either. She is an essential part of an interdependent web, all of which rely upon her for their own well-being. She is a part of the soil, which is an enormous system of mutually dependent organisms. She is a part of the water cycle, which again is a whole system of interdependency. She is a part of the atmosphere and the energy cycle and the carbon cycle (among other elemental cycling). She is an integral being in the plant and animal organisms in her ecological niche — a web that can never be un-entangled. What physical and temporal part of this does the man own as his private property? What part of his profit is not owed in compensation to all the rest of this web of inter-being, even if you grant him property rights to the tree herself? It seems to me that the man owes a great deal in this transaction. Every body suffers somewhat when the man claims the life of the tree. He owes a great debt in restitution and reparations.
But, you say, these are not human people. They have no use for the type of wealth the man acquires in taking the life of this tree out of her web of being. Except his debt does not end with the tree. He is not independent of other humans any more than he is independent of non-human systems. His labor is predicated upon many people. Therefore, he owes shares of whatever profit his labor generates to those humans that enabled his labor.
Who are these creditors? Well, the man presumably was born. His existence is utterly dependent upon his parentage and, in this culture, particularly upon his mother. Any gain of the child should be shared with the parent because the parent supports the child. If a man earns a dollar, is not most of that dollar owed to his parents for enabling him to exist, grow up and eventually earn it?
But it doesn’t stop there. The man likely has an enormous number of care-giving creditors. He may wash his own laundry and cook his own food. Maybe. But he is dependent upon those who made the clothing, who grew the materials and the food, who made the tools to transform the materials into useful food and clothing, who obtained the materials for those tools, and… yes, we could just keep going with this all day long and never get to the end of this sentence — for just his food and clothing needs.
He may buy these services and goods, but the price he pays is never the entire cost. Nor is it ever paid to all the people who contributed to those goods and services. Indeed, many of the people who produced his food, for example, are so under-compensated that they can’t buy the food they produce with their own wages. Is this liberty? (Is this life…) The man would not live if these people did not produce his food. Does he not owe them his life? Reciprocity should at least enable them to live as he does.
There is no man that is an independent economic actor. Every man is embedded in a web of inter-being and is dependent on nearly everything in order to do whatever it is he does to “earn” private property. Every man owes far more than he earns. He can not act in isolation, producing wealth without any inputs that require compensation in an equitable world. In an equitable world, there is no economic freedom. In an equitable world, private property does not exist. Only in Asshole Economics is a man free to take without giving back. Only an Asshole believes he owns what he has unfairly taken.
Well and good, you say, but this is all rather philosophical, touchy-feely stuff. So they’re assholes, they still get economic freedom, right?
Not so.
Because in all this discussion of philosophical debt and reciprocity there is underlying reality. Yes, money is all fakery. But the life of the tree and all the effects that spring from taking that life are materially real. There are real debts owed in taking that life. Even the oligarchs are beginning to understand these debts — or at least resent them.
When we burn carbon and do not make restitution to the carbon cycle and the atmosphere, we create a real debt, a true imbalance in the budget. There is harm in this imbalance as in all imbalances. The harm is varied and cascading, just as the web of inter-being is varied and complex. Harm is radiating out in all directions from this one economic activity. Even the oligarchs are suffering harm. Because they are not truly free to act independently. Because there is no act that is independent. Because there is no actor that is independent. Because there is no such thing as independence.
This culture of feigned economic independence for a small class of humans is utterly dependent upon deprivation and harm spread throughout the entire world. It is dependent upon the stolen bodies, the stolen lives of many beings. It is dependent upon the forced labor of many bodies. It is dependent upon taking from all of us. If we were to demand our fair share, if we were to refuse to give away our lives and bodies and freedom to choose, if we truly pursued our own happiness and thereby abandoned the oligarch class to a real and true independence with nothing taken from us, then this culture would collapse. It is that fragile. It is that unreal. It is a sham.
So life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
No. We get fireworks.
And all the web of harm that comes with that.
Worst holiday ever.
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 