By Steve Brawner

© 2023 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Americans don’t do a good job of celebrating their holidays, including the one happening today.

Christmas has become less about remembering Christ’s birth and more about buying and busyness. Memorial Day is less about honoring the fallen and more about backyard barbecues. Thanksgiving’s purpose is included in its name. We instead often call it “Turkey Day” because of what we might eat.

In all of these holidays, we often become so focused on activities and consumption that we neglect to reflect on what we’re actually celebrating.

Now comes Independence Day, which like Thanksgiving is popularly called another name, the Fourth of July, that obscures the holiday’s purpose. A first-time visitor probably would think Americans shoot fireworks this time of year for some vague patriotic reason.

Of course, the holiday was created to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence from British rule.

Americans these days have mixed feelings about that time in history because the Founding Fathers failed to live up to their own ideals. The Declaration says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” But all men surely weren’t treated that way. 

It would take another nine decades and a bloody Civil War before American society would eradicate slavery. We’re still struggling with its vestiges a century and a half later. 

It’s not unpatriotic to point this out. “Reflecting” does not mean “blindly celebrating.” 

At the same time, we can appreciate what the Founders accomplished when they rebelled against the world’s most powerful empire, and what they later accomplished through the Constitution. For all its flaws, our representative democracy has served us well and has been a beacon to much of the world.

This year’s Independence Day holiday coincides with a modern-day fight for independence by Ukraine. 

Russia’s Vladimir Putin invaded that country 16 months ago. He said Ukraine was a Nazi threat despite it being led by a Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, whose family members died in the Holocaust. 

Putin assumed his vaunted Army would march into Kyiv within days. Truth be told, so did much of the rest of the world.

It did not happen, partly because of the Russian army’s ineptness and partly because the spirit of independence is strong in Zelensky and in his people. As explained in the Time magazine article declaring him the Person of the Year, Ukrainians remember the Holodomer, when the Soviet state in the 1930s confiscated their harvests and at least 3 million died. Then the Germans invaded during World War II. Then the Russians dominated Ukraine again.

They know what it’s like not to be independent. So they fight. 

Despite the odds stacked against it, Ukraine stood up to the initial assault, recaptured territory, survived the winter, and has started its counteroffensive. It is doing this with much help from the rest of the free world, led by the United States. Many of the weapons used by the Ukrainians are being produced in Camden, Arkansas. Those include Javelin shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons, Stinger air defense systems, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, and HIMARS light multiple rocket launchers.

This past weekend, Russia’s private mercenary army, the Wagner Group, mutinied. It turned its back on Ukraine and traveled to within 120 miles of Moscow before stopping. For a few hours, Russia looked as if it might be in the midst of its own civil war. Putin is still in power, but it’s now impossible for him to claim his invasion is going well. 

I don’t know what the future holds. I know whose side I’m on – the ones honoring their independence by fighting for it.

Hopefully, someday they’ll celebrate it peacefully, maybe with fireworks. 

Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 13 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.