Independence Day

Growing up, I enjoyed July 4 as a day of extended family picnics and a night of banging on pots as loudly as I wanted. We didn't set off firecrackers -- we banged pots. It was much more fun, I think.

I continued to enjoy the 4th until the holiday 15 years ago that found me spending it in the VA hospital. There I observed a number of vets diving for cover at the sound of fireworks, yelling "incoming! incoming!" This experience took the joy out of July 4th fireworks for me. I've avoided them ever since.

So tonight H will be off with a girlfriend to watch fireworks, and I'll stay at home to comfort the dog, who freaks out at them. As, in a way, I do now, conjuring up those vets diving to the floor.

For me the true celebration today is of our radical roots. Interesting how countries are born of radical ideas and then enter the life cycle of nations, which is a process of increasingly restrictive limitations on radical ideas. No one has written about this process with more insight than Norman O. Brown in LOVE'S BODY.

I was hoping, from his rhetoric in the early primaries, that Obama might bring exciting new ideas and energy to politics but already he's shown himself to be just another politician. We need more. Our times demand the vision of an FDR, a rebirth of the WPA to get folks working to repair the infra-structure of this country, an urgent Manhattan Project mentality that gets the country off oil as quickly as possible, more attention to getting our act together here at home and less to trying to save the soul of foreign countries. As to the fight against terror, sometimes the best offense is a good defense.

It's easy to talk about change. It's not easy to do something that actually changes the economic and political landscape.