Independence Day is observed in the wrong month. Celebrating American independence on July 4 fails to appreciate that the document promulgated by Congress on that date was actually signed in August and, more importantly, drafted in June. The committee appointed to write the Declaration of Independence was assigned its duty on June 11, 1776.
Congress voted in favor of independence on July 2, 1776, which makes the interval from June 11 to July 2 a kind of American Elul, a period for reflection on what it means to be the United States of America before the arrival of our national Rosh Hashanah on the fourth.
Before our long weekend travel and our barbecues commemorating our country’s 250th birthday, it is worthwhile to spend some time pondering who we are as a nation.
We are generally aware of some of the most powerful, evocative statements in the Declaration of Independence such as:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” and “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
We are less attentive to the grossly hypocritical passages in the Declaration like “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” and “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The committee empowered to draft the Declaration was comprised of five men. Four were northerners (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman) and only one was a southerner (Thomas Jefferson). Three of the five (Franklin, Jefferson and Livingston) were slaveholders.
Even as they adopted language like “created equal” and “consent of the governed,” they knew that they did not mean it. They also knew how hypocritical they were when striking from the final version of the Declaration Jefferson’s original text condemning the king for “captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither” and the king’s being “determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought and sold.”
From its birth, the US has been a country at spiritual war with itself over its high-minded assertions of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as a right of all people versus its dark, smarmy, bigoted and oppressive treatment of those it deems unworthy of treatment as “Men.”
There have been moments when the forces of the Enlightenment that informed the word choices of the Committee of Five were the victors. Among them: when the Civil War ended slavery, women secured the right to vote, Jim Crow was defeated, anti-miscegenation laws were ruled unconstitutional, and same-sex couples won the battle for marriage equality.
Sadly, there have been as many or more periods of time when the forces of hypocrisy reigned supreme. Slavery endured for nearly a century after independence followed by another century of formal oppression under Jim Crow. anti-Chinese laws, anti-immigration laws, Japanese internment camps, laws criminalizing homosexuality, bans on gender-affirming care and many others.
Who are we as a nation? This question might be perceived as merely political, but our national identity is not just about party allegiance. The us is at one time a country that adheres to the lofty principles espoused by the Declaration of Independence and a country whose leaders and citizens follow in the hypocritical footsteps of the authors of the Declaration who spoke magnanimously of their fellow human beings, but who did not really mean it for anyone but themselves.
Our politics is a manifestation of the ascendancy of the hypocritical in this unending battle on both the MAGA right and the Progressive-Socialist left. As a nation, we are defined not only by the radicalism of the agents who are attempting to hijack our government, but also by our willingness as citizens to tolerate them.
Thomas Massie garnered attention after losing the 2026 Republican primary for his seat in the House to Ed Gallrein in Kentucky when he told his supporters that he was late coming to the stage because “it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”
As glad as we might be that a bigot like Massie was defeated, that joy might cause us to overlook the fact that in 2022 Massie was the lone no vote in a 420-1 vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism before going on to receive 278,000 votes in the 2024 election. It was only Massie’s perceived disloyalty to Donald Trump and not his hate for Jews that lost him the election.
Meanwhile, in a Texas runoff for the House, Democrat Maureen Galindo posted on Instagram “She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists.” She further declared “It will be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists.”
She was also defeated, but still received 7,291 votes in the runoff, while less than half of those who cast ballots in the primary came out to vote after Galindo’s hatefulness made national news. We know that turnout is always lower in such elections, but the failure of the electorate to turn out in larger numbers to repudiate Galindo’s hatefulness says something about how apathy toward bigotry enables hypocrisy’s rise.
Growing anti-Jewish hate in the US is a worrisome trend, but it is also an illustration of something foundational about our country. In America, equal and unequal have long existed side by side, tolerated by an apathetic electorate.
The anti-Jewish manifestation of this reality is deeply concerning to our community, but it is not unique. Race, sex, gender and class are all visibly used for political exploitation with reproof reserved only for those in a different party from ours.
During our celebration on July 4, we will hear repeated exhortations to remember that it is a self-evident truth that all people are created equal.
Will we also decide that it is time to declare our independence from the hypocrites who do not really believe that?
