It helps to be reminded that independence is a beginning — and not a decisive end. Glancing back to the July 4th weekend of half a century ago offers reminders that maintaining America’s freedoms, way of life — and essential security — is incessant work.
That’s easy to forget as we get swept into and blown along the wind tunnel that is this busy age. We’re most always scurrying headlong — and, too often, head-down — toward the next appointment, event or challenge. Reflection, contemplation — and the perspective those can fuel — suffer as a result of our frenetic lifestyle.
That’s why most of us look forward to long holiday weekends. R&R are well-deserved for the great majority of us in this productive nation and society.
We’re hopeful there will be time this Independence Day weekend as well for taking even a brief pause to reassess and rethink where our nation stands — and where we stand within it.
The selections here from the July 4, 1966 Opinion-Editorial pages of The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution offer comment on issues of that day. The specifics are dated history now; yet, the general themes are still firmly relevant. War. Race relations. The economy. An adult generation head-shaking at antics of up-and-coming youth. Patriotism. Protest. Disdain for elected leaders and authority. Sound familiar? We think so.
The Book of Ecclesiastes offers sound counsel for this metro, state and nation at this hour, we believe: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
Yet, as a writer of long ago noted in a column presented here today, patriotism is still common currency in our midst. The Republic survived then, thanks to hard struggle, sacrifice and even strategic compromise.
That hasn’t changed through the decades, for independence and freedom’s work is never done. May that ever be so.
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