On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote a famous letter to his wife, Abigail, back in Massachusetts.
He predicted that America's Independence Day would "be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival." Adams felt it "ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance. ... It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."
And so it has been, which is as it ought to be. It's also a good day to refresh our memories about the words that have informed our notion of our American identity, because we are, after all, uniquely the people of an idea rather than a nation founded like others on blood and soil.
One of the best and most elegant expressions of this can be found in John Courtney Murray's epochal 1960 reflection on American pluralism and law, "We Hold These Truths." Murray, a Jesuit theologian, begins by noting Abraham Lincoln's assertion in the Gettysburg Address that our nation was "dedicated to a proposition."
"I take it that Lincoln used the word with conceptual propriety," Murray wrote. "In philosophy a proposition is the statement of a truth to be demonstrated. In mathematics a proposition is at times the statement of an operation to be performed. Our Fathers dedicated the nation to a proposition in both senses. ... It is an affirmation and also an intention. It presents itself as a coherent structure of thought that lays claim to intellectual assent; it also presents itself as an organized political project that aims at historical success. Our Fathers asserted it and most ably argued it; they also undertook to 'work it out,' and they signally succeeded."
According to Murray, the "American Proposition" was not a finished thing, either as a doctrine or as a project, nor should its historical success ever be taken for granted. What's more, he said, whenever the proposition did attain any measure of success, that should be followed by "enlargement on penalty of decline."
One of 20th century America's singular accomplishments was the realization that enlargement of our national proposition was contingent on freedom of expression, which brings us to another of the struggle's classic texts -- the dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Homes Jr., joined by Justice Louis D. Brandeis -- to the Supreme Court's majority decision in Abrams vs. United States.
