Commemorating July 4, the 250th Anniversary of the USA with the Words the Frederick Douglass
On this day, July 4, 2026 we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation. Since this number represents history, let's look at history:
These words from Frederick Douglass in 1861, (the year of Confederate rebellion and secession to preserve slavery) regarding a critique of American culture, still ring true today!
_________
Americans, Douglass believed, instinctively and culturally watched history and preferred not to act in it. Douglass summed up his bitter complaint as “this terrible paradox of passing history” rooted in a distinctively American selfishness.
“Whoever levies a tax upon our [tea], will find the whole land blazing with patriotism and bristling with bayonets.” If some foreign power tried to “impress a few Yankee sailors,” Americans would go “fight like heroes.”
Douglass fashioned a withering chastisement of American self-centeredness that would match any modern complaint about the culture’s hyper individualism.
“Millions of a foreign race may be stolen from their homes, and reduced to hopeless and inhuman bondage among us,” he complained, “and we either approve the deed, or protest as gently as ‘sucking doves.’ ”
His “wickedly selfish” Americans loved to celebrate their “own heritage, and on this condition are content to see others crushed in our midst.”
From "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom" by David W. Blight, Page 324
