If anyone out there hasn't seen the film "The Graduate" and still intends to (is that even possible?), I am giving you a spoiler alert, so stop reading. For the rest of you, please read on.
At the end of the film, Dustin Hoffman's and Katharine Ross's characters triumphantly run away from the wedding her parents had planned for her to a man she did not love, only to end up on a bus with the most uncertain, dazed and confused looks on their faces. To my mind, the change in their expressions as the bus pulls away has always connoted the growing realization that, while they may have struck a blow for their independence from the overbearing generation that came before them, they had no idea where they were going to go, what they were going to do, or why they were going to do it. You could almost read their thoughts: "Oh my God, what have I done, and what in the world am I going to do now?" (Forgive me reader for that clumsy prose. I need to work on my interior monologues.)
As I sit in the quiet of my home on a warm and sunny 5th of July, enjoying peace, security, and the freedom of expression, I wonder whether any of the Founding Fathers had the same thought. Now that the historical record has been written, we know that their great gamble was not only a success, but one of the most significant successes in human history. (I dislike hyperbole, but I don't think that last sentence is hyperbolic.) At the time, though, victory was far from assured, and they could not know how their rebellion would end. Britain could well have come out victorious, and the Declaration's signers could well have been hanged separately. It's not hard to imagine that some of the signers experienced a similar, overwhelming sense of an uncertain future that seemed to cloud the visages of the characters in The Graduate's final moments. "Oh my God, what have we done, and what in the world are we going to do now?"
What they did was nothing less than found a nation. What they wrote was one of the most powerful statements of the natural right to human liberty ever conceived. What they would do was secure the new nation's independence, and invent a constitutional form of government the likes of which the world had never known, and which would remain a beacon of liberty to the world for centuries to come.
Their work was not perfect, and with regard to the abomination of slavery, was horribly flawed. But the words of the Declaration, and the structure of the Constitution, would lay the groundwork for the abolition of slavery nearly nine decades later, for the passage of the Civil Rights Act a century after that, and for the continued, if non-linear, evolution of a society that is more and more free for more and more people. The progress from 1776 to the 1860s to the 1960s and beyond has been shamefully and inexcusably slow, but it has been progress nonetheless, and it all began on the 4th of July.
So, how best to honor and continue the work of our nation's founders? How about this for starters: By never taking our freedom for granted; by never letting down our guard in the preservation of liberty for all of our people; by working tirelessly to make this a freer and more just society; and by supporting the causes of human rights and human liberty for the citizens of all nations, not just our own. I have been privileged to know and work with amazing men and women in my profession who have devoted countless hours of their own time volunteering to support the many causes of liberty - from those who have given pro bono representation to Guantanamo detainees, to those who represent the poor in eviction proceedings in the Boston Housing Court, to those who file amicus briefs in support of First Amendment principles, to those who are finding ways to ensure that our military personnel and veterans and their families have access to the legal services that they uniquely need and deserve. These shining examples of public service represent a large number of men and women in our country who press on in the vital cause of individual liberty enshrined in our founding documents. Now that the fireworks are over, I want to thank them for doing their part to make America the great nation that it is, not only for what they have accomplished, but for what they will accomplish, and for the next generation of leaders whom they will inspire to carry on the work that lies ahead.
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