Remember on July 4: Greatness comes from solidarity, shared sacrifice

Remember on July 4: Greatness comes from solidarity, shared sacrifice
There are two kinds of materialism - the kind which disregards the meta-physical and the kind that is a better cage for the working class. The United States started as a deist upper class project in 1776. 150 earlier, Massachusetts Bay was founded by Puritans who were upset that the Church England was getting too Catholic. Virginia was started as a mission of colonization. and fortune. They found it in tobacco and the trafficking of human flesh. The polity is now infected with the commodification of voters, with money buying negative advertisements tinged with propaganda.

And yet, we have people marching in the streets for the sake of a better polity. America is finally seeking salvation from its original sin of racism. It is demanding a better life, one where its youth is not enslaved by debt. This is what Democracy looks like. On its best days, democracy is the exercise of divinely granted free will in search of the good. It is where Aquinas meets the Enlightenment. Franklin said we can have a constitutional republic, if we can keep it. As long as we remember that, we have something to celebrate.