A Few Minutes with the Mayor – September 2015

“Where Liberty dwells, there is my country.” Words spoken by Ben Franklin. But today? We are willing to forsake Liberty for comfort or safety. Certainly this was untrue in Franklin’s day. So conditioned to some government bureaucrat telling us how to behave, it no longer concerns us that their authority for action is derived from us… the People.

And how do Washington’s bureaucrats justify their endless regulations? Why, through one program after another, all implemented for “our” benefit! Tyranny almost always begins with some reason for improving perceived faults or shortcomings in public affairs. Its growth is expedited by leaders who would drive us into separate groups… then pitting each one against the other. If memory serves me right, the last time we came together as a nation… as one people called Americans… was in World War II. It was a time when differences were set aside, when most people realized that unless they stood together in the face of a common enemy, they would surely end much as Benjamin Franklin warned his colleagues in 1776… “We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

In 1940, Congress designated the third Sunday in May as “I am an American Day.” In 1944 Harry Truman issued a proclamation calling for an annual Presidential proclamation recognizing, “All who, by coming of age or naturalization, have attained the status of citizenship, and the day shall be designated as “I am an American Day.”

Subsequently, “I am an American Day” was promoted through the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. A 16-minute film, “I am an American,” was produced and screened in theaters as a short feature. In 1952, Congress moved the “I am an American Day” observation to September 17, and renamed it “Citizenship Day.” Since then, the day has been renamed Constitution Day with a mandate that schools receiving public funds teach the history of the American constitution on that day. Today, no one remembers, “I am an American Day!”

But I remember. Still young when Truman issued his proclamation, there was something magical when “I am an American Day” came each year. Wherever I went, there were American flags flying… on store fronts, lamp posts, window ledges. Spring weather was well-advanced as my family walked through the park two blocks from our New York tenement, where we’d skirt the lake filled with Sunday boaters, the water’s surface shimmering in the noonday sun, then around a small hill, through a grove of trees, and we’d reach a bandshell festooned with American flags, in front of which were three or four hundred chairs. We’d take our seats, the chairs would fill, and the chamber orchestra, with perhaps 40 or so musicians, would take their positions in the bandshell.

Then began the parade of dignitaries making speeches about what it means to be an American. One such speaker was the famed jurist, Judge Learned Hand, who spoke:

“What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.”

What I have described are memories… they cannot be brought back. But… we can inaugurate a new event… in October we will set aside one Sunday afternoon for a Courthouse concert on the lawn. It won’t be a symphony orchestra, but it will be a fine small ensemble. We’ll have chairs for all to listen and enjoy. The date is October 11th… from 1:30 to 3:30pm.

We’ll even try to find a few American flags to fly in sun.