They Risked It All So We Could Eat Pie in Lawn Chairs
A Fourth of July Meditation on What They Risked, What They Argued, and Why It Still Matters
America didn’t start with unity. It started with an argument, and a very risky signature.
When I was a kid, think 5th through 9th grade, I lived with my single mom in a suburb of Boston. That meant U.S. history wasn’t something we read about in textbooks and forgot the next week. It was underfoot. Around every corner. Literally in the backyard.
My grandma used to take us to Independence Day celebrations—the kind with fife and drum parades, bunting on every lamppost, and that perfect mix of kettle corn and gunpowder in the air. She’d gather us close and tell stories about the guy who rode a horse through the night yelling that the Redcoats were coming. Paul Revere wasn’t a chapter heading—he was our neighborhood’s unofficial mascot.
We visited Faneuil Hall. We touched the Liberty Bell. We camped out at historic sites in Concord, Massachusetts, though I was probably more focused on s’mores than muskets at the time. And there were these living history museums with actors in tricorn hats teaching us how to churn butter and argue about taxes. We stood in churches and homes as old as the country itself, their floorboards still groaning under the weight of what happened there.
You couldn’t help but feel it: this country wasn’t inevitable. It was invented.
And not by consensus, mind you, but by conflict.
Before the Fireworks, There Was Fear
It’s easy to forget that before there were hot dogs and folding chairs, there was fear. Real fear. Not the “What if the potato salad’s been out too long?” kind. The kind where signing your name to the wrong document could mean the gallows. The kind where failure didn’t mean a bruised ego, it meant prison, exile, maybe worse.
That was the air the Founders were breathing when they gathered in Philadelphia.
It Wasn’t Obvious What Should Happen
We like to imagine it all came together smoothly. That a bunch of brilliant Enlightenment thinkers got in a room, high-fived, and wrote down some truths that were just sitting there, waiting to be declared. In reality, it was a mess.
Some delegates wanted to patch things up with King George. Others were ready to start melting down church bells for ammunition. These weren’t broke revolutionaries with nothing to lose. These were lawyers, landowners, merchants, and philosophers, people with reputations, businesses, and families who had a lot on the line.
But something larger pulled them forward. A shared sense, however fragile, that liberty was worth the gamble.
The Room Where It Actually Happened
If you could time travel back to that summer of 1776, you wouldn’t walk into a peaceful roundtable discussion. You’d walk into a high-stakes shouting match in wool coats. Egos clashed. Tempers flared. John Adams probably lost his voice more than once. Franklin cracked jokes to cut the tension. And somewhere, Thomas Jefferson was quietly redrafting a sentence that would end up quoted on monuments for the next 250 years.
They argued. They compromised. They wrestled ideas into form.
And in the end, they did something that still takes your breath away: they declared independence from the most powerful empire on earth. On purpose.
“We Hold These Truths…”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” Except, of course, they weren’t.
Not to kings. Not to courts. Not even to a good chunk of their neighbors. But those truths—about rights and liberty and government existing to serve the people, weren’t written for consensus. They were written for conviction. They were written for us.
To say rights come from God, not government, wasn’t just radical. It was revolutionary. Literally. And the moment they put it in writing, they knew they were crossing a line they couldn’t uncross.
What If They’d Lost?
Because if they lost? That Declaration would’ve been a confession. Their names would’ve been neatly listed for execution. Their property seized. Their families left to pick through the ashes.
But they didn’t lose. They debated, they risked, they argued like hell, and they built a country out of the rubble of their former allegiance.
Messy Then, Messy Now
We forget how messy this country has always been. From the very beginning, we’ve been a walking contradiction. The nation that declared all men are created equal while denying equality to many. The republic that birthed George Washington and the Alien and Sedition Acts in the same breath.
But the genius wasn’t in pretending we were perfect. The genius was building a system where disagreement didn’t mean destruction. Where the mess was the method. Where liberty had room to stretch, evolve, and occasionally trip over its own ideals before getting up and trying again.
They didn’t give us a flawless country. They gave us the tools to keep working on it.
Parades, Picnics, and the Promise
So today, as the marching bands play Sousa in small-town parades and kids wave flags from curbs lined with folding chairs… as families grill hamburgers and chomp on watermelon on sun-warmed blankets and swat at mosquitoes between bites of apple pie… as the fireworks light up skies above beaches, ballfields, and church parking lots, just take a moment.
Remember that we are not a country because we all agree. We’re a country because we don’t have to, and we’re still free. Because enough people, in the heat of summer and the face of tyranny, decided that freedom was worth the fight.
The Final Bang
This Fourth of July, don’t just celebrate independence. Celebrate the wild, improbable, caffeine-free miracle that a bunch of stubborn men in wool coats decided to gamble their fortunes and necks on a half-baked dream of self-government.
They risked it all, so we could argue on Facebook, complain about parade parking, and eat pie in lawn chairs while fireworks explode over a free country.
Not a bad trade.
And if you're the kind of person who believes America is still worth showing up for, not just on the Fourth of July, but every day, consider chipping in to support my campaign—Cyrus For Oregon.
Listened to the NPR reading of the declaration today. The last time?? 🥲 But growing up around Boston must have been a fantastic experience. I used to go there for work, and took the "Freedom Walk" (?) once, walking to places I'd only read about from my home in Idaho, 3000 miles away. It was a stirring experience. Later, in 2000, I got to hear Arthur Fiedler conduct the Pops at the esplanade, and then watch the US Constitution sailing out in full rigging, with fireboats spraying colored fountains at her. I love Boston.
Cyrus, I’m not sure by the time I finish this soliloquy I’ll post it or cancel it, because I anticipate difficulty expressing my patriotism on this day of celebration. For the record, I’m a white, heterosexual male, and contemplate that position of “safety” and inclusion often. Yet, the abject failure of our country’s effort to implement the ideals expressed in the Declaration render my nationalism surfeited. I labor to infer the relevance of those historical events in today’s culture. White supremacy renders these noble expressions moot. By my core morality, either our system of governance is fractured, or we as a collective are in fact represented by MAGA. If it’s the latter, you can plant your flag in someone else's lawn. Not mine.