“When a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”
—The Declaration of Independence, 1776
“Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.”
—Marquis de Lafayette, 1781
Independence Day, for me, has never been just red-white-and-blue bunting or the pop of fireworks against a summer sky. It was always more complicated, more intimate, more shadowed.
Growing up the son of a Vietnam Marine, the Fourth of July arrived each year as a day braided in ritual and paradox. By morning, it was sacred family time. In our Long Island living room, air thick with July heat, my father would tune the old TV to Channel 5, where the film 1776 aired like clockwork. He loved that movie. Made us all watch it—no arguments. We whined, of course. The songs were a little silly to our young ears, the wigs absurd, the dialogue fast and witty. But there was no defiance in us. When the Marine officer gave the order, we obeyed. He didn’t yell. He didn’t need to. That was the tone of command, quiet but final: sit down, pay attention. You’re about to learn something.
And we did. Maybe not all at once. But the story stuck. William Daniels as Adams, Ken Howard as Jefferson—sweating and scheming in that stifling Philadelphia chamber. A musical, yes, but also a lesson. A window into the arguments that birthed a nation. To my father, it was more than entertainment. It was civic catechism. By watching it with him, year after year, I began to understand how deeply he believed in the idea of America—not the platitudes, but the promise. That democracy was fragile. That freedom demanded effort. That history mattered.
Philadelphia in July 1776 was a city of sweltering heat and rising tension. The war had already begun—Lexington and Concord were over a year behind them—but the colonies had not yet declared what they were truly fighting for. Inside the Pennsylvania State House, fifty-six men gathered to do something unprecedented: to sever ties with the most powerful empire on Earth and declare themselves free.
The decision wasn’t easy or unanimous. On July 2, after fiery debate, the delegates voted to adopt Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence. John Adams was euphoric. “The Second Day of July 1776,” he wrote to Abigail, “will be the most memorable Epocha in the History of America.” He was off by two days—but not by spirit.
Jefferson, in a rented room on Market Street, drafted the Declaration with a quill and a philosophy. The words he penned—edited and cut by his colleagues—still burn:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”
Even then, the contradiction was unbearable. Jefferson owned slaves. So did many signers. A passage condemning the transatlantic slave trade was struck to appease South Carolina and Georgia, and to shield northern merchants complicit in the trade. “Posterity will never forgive us,” warned Samuel Adams. And he was right.
Yet even flawed, the Declaration spoke the unspeakable truth of the time: that governments derive power from the consent of the governed, and when that power is abused, the people must resist.
“We must all hang together,” Franklin quipped, “or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
On July 4, the edited Declaration was approved. The votes had been cast. There was no turning back. Copies were printed and read aloud. Bells rang in Philadelphia on July 8. Washington had it read to the troops. The world was on notice.
And so it began. With words. With signatures. With risk. With hope.
That was the history my father held close. That was the story he insisted we carry forward. And yet, when the sun went down on those Long Island nights, that story took on another shape entirely.
Because when darkness fell on the Fourth of July, a very different mood descended.
In the neighborhoods of the South Shore during the 70s and 80s, fireworks were not confined to parks or town shows. They were everywhere—illicit, unregulated, defiant. M-80s hidden in coffee cans, roman candles launched from driveways, cherry bombs tossed like pebbles into the street. They lit up the night not in celebration, but in chaos. For most families, it was a thrill. A burst of rebellion wrapped in patriotism.
For my father, it was something else.
With each explosion, I watched the change come over him. His eyes would narrow. His jaw would tighten. He’d retreat into silence, flinching at the booms, scanning the windows like he was waiting for something. And of course he was. In Vietnam, the sound of fireworks wasn’t symbolic—it was survival. Pop-pop-BOOM. A convoy ambushed. A flash, then fire. No holiday could separate those sounds from their meaning.
Sometimes he’d sit on the edge of the couch, unmoving. Sometimes he’d leave the room. And sometimes—on the rare occasions it rained and the skies stayed silent—we all felt a quiet kind of grace. No one said it, but we were all grateful. The rain meant peace. It meant he didn’t have to relive the ambush, the waiting, the noise. On those quiet nights, America’s independence felt a little less explosive—and a little more whole.
That was our Fourth of July.
And so this holiday, for me, has never been uncomplicated. It lives in a place of beauty and ache. It lives in Jefferson’s soaring words and in the breath my father would hold after every blast.
It is pride and it is pain. It is gratitude and reckoning. It is freedom—and the cost of it.
My father’s reverence for history was not nostalgic—it was vigilant. And now, as I stand where he once did, I see how necessary that vigilance remains. And the Fourth of July comes again, carrying its rituals, its contradictions, its weight. But something is different this year. The air feels heavier. The republic more fragile. We are living in a moment where the machinery of democracy groans under the strain of corruption and cruelty. Masked federal agents. Detention camps. Laws gutted. Freedoms suspended. Truth mocked. The executive branch has become a theater of self-enrichment, and the other branches have gone silent—shadows of their former selves.
And yet—despite all that, or maybe because of it—I find myself feeling more patriotic than ever.
Not in the hollow, flag-waving way. Not in the slogans. Not in the branding. But in the bone-deep knowledge that this country is worth fighting for. That its soul, though bruised, has not been extinguished. That the ideas drafted in that hot Philadelphia room still matter, even if we’ve fallen short of them.
I feel patriotic because I have seen what freedom costs. Because I’ve watched a man I love flinch through its celebration. Because I know that real patriotism is not obedience—it’s accountability. It’s memory. It’s standing up when the country drifts from its purpose and saying: no, this is not who we’re supposed to be.
I feel patriotic because I still believe in the promise.
Because liberty still has a country.
If we will it.
Coda: The Star Spangled Banner (Arranged By Igor Stravinsky)
In 1941, Igor Stravinsky—already a towering figure in 20th-century music—arranged The Star-Spangled Banner not as provocation, but as homage. It was a personal and expressive gesture of patriotism from a Russian émigré who, with measured reverence, sought to honor his adopted home through art. Yet what emerged was not a national celebration, but a quiet cultural schism, played out in harmony and law.
Stravinsky's version adheres to the anthem's original melodic line, but re-harmonizes it with the precision of a composer who saw music as both architecture and argument. The second strain—often the emotional peak of traditional renditions—features a telling intervention: a major seventh chord, unmistakably Stravinskian. It's a moment of chromatic radiance, a harmonic color rarely heard in patriotic song, and therein lay the problem.
For Stravinsky, this was no rebellion. Concerts during wartime America were expected to open with the anthem, and he found the existing arrangements both unimaginative and musically impoverished. So, on July 4, 1941 he completed his own. The manuscript, sent to Eleanor Roosevelt for a war fund auction, was quietly returned. He later mused that the chord may have proved too bold for "certain patriotic ladies." Even beauty, it seems, must not stray too far from tradition.
Three years later, Stravinsky conducted his version with the Boston Symphony and faced something more absurd than rejection: intervention by the Boston police. Massachusetts law, officials said, prohibited “tampering” with national property. A musical arrangement was treated like an act of vandalism. Police were reportedly instructed to remove the score from the orchestra’s stands. Stravinsky’s dry retort—that the official version was rarely performed accurately in Massachusetts anyway—did little to defuse the situation.
To me, it's beautiful: the clean counterpoint, the dignified pacing. But it's the subtleties—voice-leading shifts, restrained chromaticism, and carefully modulated dynamics—that elevate the work.
“America” by Neil Diamond
In 2025, Neil Diamond’s “America” resonates with renewed poignancy amid shifting national identities. The song’s refrain—“They’re coming to America”—echoes not just as celebration, but as complex invocation. Its hopeful tone now exists in tension with immigration policy debates and resurging nationalism, making the song both a nostalgic anthem and a reminder of the unfinished American promise.
The lyric “Got a dream they’ve come to share” carries added weight in a world where the idea of America remains both beacon and battleground. For many, “America” in 2025 is as much a contested concept as a destination—one defined by its contradictions: freedom and fear, welcome and exclusion. The song, once seen as a straightforward tribute, now plays like a layered prayer—offered not from certainty, but from the ongoing pursuit of belonging.
“4th of July” by Aimee Mann
Aimee Mann’s “4th of July” is a hauntingly intimate portrait of loss, memory, and emotional regret that sharply subverts patriotic symbolism. Set against the backdrop of America’s most celebratory holiday, the song reframes fireworks as futile spectacle—“What a waste of gunpowder and sky”—and uses the day’s grandeur to illuminate personal disconnection. When I first heard that line, my minds eye transported immediately to watching my dad wince when the fireworks were illiciting a PTSD nightmare. And in 2025, its emotional resonance only deepens in a cultural moment where performative celebration often masks inner and collective grief. The song’s quiet ache feels more truthful than any anthem.
Lyrically, Mann weaves together failed relationships and the difficulty of moving on with literary precision. The line “She’s got the river down which I sold her” is particularly devastating—a metaphor of betrayal and surrender that lingers with mythic weight. In an era saturated with nostalgia and revisionism, “4th of July” offers no false catharsis. Instead, it reminds us that the past, both personal and national, cannot be rewritten—it must be faced, verse by verse, chapter by chapter.
“Momma, Look Sharp” Original Broadway Cast Recording, 1776
The most enduring song from 1776. A boy’s voice, barely past childhood, calling out through the smoke of revolution—not for glory, but for his mother.
“Momma, hey momma, look sharp—here I be.”
No fanfare. No flag-waving. Just blood in the grass and the silence that follows a battle.
This isn’t about 1776. It’s about every son who died calling out for home. Every war sold as noble. Every body buried under a tree.
“And never again will you whisper to me…”
That line breaks me.
Every time.
I’m going to take a break for a week, for some much needed vacation time with family. I hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th.
Onward.
I love your 4th of July
letter to us.
I love how you honor
your father
as you follow
in his deeply patriotic footsteps.
It is so tender and real.