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I once asked my mom why her generation jettisoned politeness in the social revolution. She answered that, at the time, they didn't know what all they needed to get rid of in society. They saw "good old boys" in the South getting on television assuring everyone that everything was fine, when everyone knew segregation was real. Civil rights protestors knew that the Southern establishment was training fire hoses on them and sicking the dogs on them. I can imagine how, when so much so-called "politeness" was duplicitous it was hard to know what politeness was real. It must have been easier, back then, just to get rid of all of it to reveal everyone's face so we could all get everything out in the open and, maybe then, see more clearly how to fix things.
Our country has a shameful history of oppression and a proud history of progress. The US should have ended slavery in 1776, but it took 90 years and a civil war before it abolished it (and the Civil War was by no means one-sided morally -- just ask any Southerner about tariffs). In 1792, the leaders of our fledgling republic, which they had forged out of the crucible of Enlightenment revolution, should have listened to their fellow Enlightenment philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, who suggested that women have the same rights as men in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Fortunately, in the late 19th C, their posterity fought for this and, finally, in 1920, our republic granted women the right to vote. In 1973, when the psychological community realized that homosexuality is not a mental illness and removed it from mental illness listings, our society should have instantly granted all gays, Lesbians, and bisexuals equal rights to heterosexuals (or maybe the psychological community should have realized the truth earlier, such as when zoologist Alfred Kinsey discovered that it's normal among us humans).
Embedded in American society are the concepts of freedom and equality for all people. Slavery, the oppression of women, and the oppression of gays, Lesbians and bisexuals all violated the fundamental categorical imperative of America: freedom and equality for all. That's what makes this past myopia so shameful, but this ethos, which informed all of the progressive movements in response, is itself what makes America great.
Prior to the Enlightenment movement, which the American Revolution was a part of, European societies would never have made this progress, not at any speed. Serfdom (which is basically slavery) was normal. So was women being subordinate to men. The idea that homosexuality was a sin went uncontested. All this was because people believed in the Divine Right of Kings, allegiance to the medieval Catholic Church, and a God-given hierarchy to society that put lords above serfs, men above women, and heterosexuals as less sinful than homosexuals. Those values were carved in stone. The Roman Empire wasn't much better (though there were places for homosexuality). Most societies, around the world, and throughout history, have been authoritarian. In fact, they didn't even say "authoritarian" before the Enlightenment revolution, they just said "normal". Rebellion would only get you hanged for treason. It was only revolutions like ours that opened the way for change. However shameful our slow progress may have been, it's a miracle that progress happened at all. It happened because of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution, rather than in spite of it.
All the progress we've made is great. There's just one problem. My fellow progressives seem to always want to frame progress in terms of revolution. Why is that a problem? Because America was founded by a revolution against the old aristocratic hierarchy of Europe. While I can see how it can sometimes be useful to turn things on their heads to see what they look like upside down, there's only so many times we can turn our society on its head before everyone will start getting dizzy.
Rather than framing progress in terms of "revolutions", I'm asking everyone in our society to see that the American Revolution is ongoing and your progress is part of it. Our society has always had the free-society ideals of the Enlightenment: equality, freedom and a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but the light of those ideals keeps getting blocked. It's the job of every American generation to keep unblocking that light and moving us closer to those ideals. But that does not require a new revolution. It does require constant improvement in our society, however. Stop rebelling. Start improving.
This Independence Day, let's remember that America has always been and, God/Cosmos willing, will always be great, in spite of racism, patriarchy, and homophobia, all of which preexisted our nation, because people like you and me keep on helping the light, which started with the American Revolution, shine equally on all.
