This has become an annual rite: the recitation of a blogger, one who sees himself as a defender of all that is the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society about love for this so secular holiday and for this country in which we were blessed to live, and for the luckiest of us, to have been born here. It applies no less this year than any other even if the ties that have bound us all together as one, often frayed, and pulled apart, are really on the eve of destruction.

The optimistic view of our founders (even, perhaps the nine year old John Quincy Adams) that what makes us one (e pluribus unum) made sense under the circumstances of our nation's birth, and maybe it still made sense through the four score and seven years which immediately followed, through Missouri Compromises that solved nothing, and a civil war which ended with the victorious telling the vanquished that they would have to abide by a new arrangement, but whether might makes right, it certainly doesn't make the side with inadequate might see the error of their ways.

A hundred years and then some after our great civil war, though, we watch agog as the side defeated in war, continues to complain about the federal government and to fly the flag of its momentarily independent republic, and to teach its children a bogus version of history.

That old saw about history being written by the victors has a bit of resonance, then, but what is more certain is that the country whose birth this native born New Englander celebrates is not the same one everyone is celebrating. (And, by the way, Madame Bachmann, John Adams was as anti-slavery in 1776 as his then nine year old son became, so you did not have to go all absurdist on us to support the view that some founders were dedicated to ending slavery, if that was your point. Your point, though, was that was a mission of the founders as a whole, which is decidedly was not, making it necessary for J Q Adams and others to continue the fight until the Civil War.)

But, of course, talkin' history is so much a waste of time. We are a nation that cannot remember what we ourselves said just a few years back, or who propose things which we do not really think of as good ideas, simply to make political points:

And so, if last year we could post this, which tells us that only 26% of the country are aware of exactly which country we were part of until we became independent, this year's version is that the actual year in which this happened remains a mystery. Loudon Wainwright III sang this song in 1976, so maybe that's a hint.

So it is hollering into an empty vessel to point out that in our system of government, is not the President who "takes us to war" or, as President Bush himself put it

There is going to be ample time for the American people to assess whether or not I made a — good calls, whether or not I used good judgment, whether or not I made the right decision in removing Saddam Hussein from power, and I look forward to that debate, and I look forward to talking to the American people about why I made the decisions I made

but yet, when President Obama determines that we should support a NATO humanitarian mission in Libya, all of a sudden he is acting beyond his authority. (Apparently, presidents with a black parent, do not have the same authority as the all-white kind).

In the United States of 2011, there is no past, there is just a now, and nothing that ever happened before has any meaning. If someone wants to say that Paul Revere took the signal from the Old North Church as requiring him to ring bells in support of the right to bear arms, then that's what happened, and if Wikipedia says otherwise, just change it. (Longfellow is apparently being exhumed and directed to re-write poems some people were required to memorize long ago). Apparently, John Quincy Adams' childhood is being revised as we speak. ("Founding Youngster" maybe? His poor much maligned mother, Abigail Adams, surely more a "founder" than her nine year old son, gets shunted off to the side yet again.)

Since nothing that has happened before matters, the civil war resolution of issues left open from 1789 (when, for all intents and purposes, the Constitution began to have effect) until the Civil War "settled" them, are meaningless. Hence, those states dragged into a union based on a promise that we will decide the slavery issue some other time, that you won't have to let them vote, but we will count each one as 3/5ths of a person for the purpose of determining how many seats your state will get in the House of Representatives and votes in the electoral college, that at least held out some basis for the idea that a sovereign state could reject those federal laws it believed were repugnant to the Constitution and permitting a state to secede from the union remain open. After all, they joined the union on those understandings (Gov Perry has even suggested Texas had a more explicit promise when it joined the union).

This is the argument we are continuing to have. Some thought these issues to have been resolved by the (forced, though it was) enactment of the 14th Amendment, but, of course, its meaning, purpose and effect has been debated almost since the day it became part of the Constitution. Until recently, the most significant focus was on that part of the Amendment which defined

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, [as] citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside

but it appears that the fourth section of the Amendment, which at first glance appears simply to say that the United States will pay its debts arising out of the Civil War (which, as Lincoln insisted was legally nothing more than "a rebellion" against the federal government) but not pay those debts of the Confederate States of America (a government which the United States does not legally recognize), may soon be at issue. Whether it is or is not a source of executive authority over "debts" of the United States, a struggle over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment is at least a direct statement of the questions which divide us, than the many other supposed "issues" brought forward every day (such as whether the federal government require that Americans purchase health insurance).

The Beltway can continue to debate whether the president should be called names for mild rebukes to political opponents who argue that his failure to capitulate to their demands makes him "unengaged". The now suspended fool (the son of a man who has shown more courage more often than most people can even imagine, but seems unable to pass on elements of humanity to his offspring) is typical of those who believe it necessary to "be fair" to the side of an argument that outsiders might think them to favor, and to simply gloss over the failings or ravings of "the other side." It never works, because bullies live to bully people and not to make nice----ever--- and the son of the great man should have known this by now.

Now his partner in nonsense---his co-author in the definitive book about how the know it alls in the Beltway (the ones who repeatedly announced that every "mistake" made, helped the Republican ticket) saw the 2008 campaign.

The partner is beltway blather told the same program, "Republicans in the Morning" (also called "Morning Joe") used a similar and familiar dodge---thought to be the sign of impartiality---pronouncing the argument about the debt ceiling to be kabuki and accusing the President of "posturing."

This is not news analysis. It is just a lump of noise, signifying and illuminating nothing.

Once again, as the country battles for its soul---for what kind of country we want to be after over 230 years trying to figure it out---we get no help from the places protected by the First Amendment to illuminate and not occlude. Olbermann is not the only one who can steal from Murrow who, speaking of the medium which most often broadcast his programs:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.

He and Keith would say "good night and good luck." We'll say, have a happy Fourth.