How is America doing on her 250th birthday?

As we pause to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, we should take the time to evaluate her well-being.

All is not well in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Why isn’t it?

The leaders whom we have entrusted with her care — her very lifeline — are not doing what it takes to keep her healthy and strong. To promote her general welfare. In the meantime, we the people are asleep at the switch.

America’s health, like our body’s, is dependent on the function and well-being of all of its parts.

First, what actions define a healthy America? The Constitution and its amendments provide the answer: “… to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”

When we examine the parts — state governments, the federal government and we the people — that shoulder the primary responsibility of keeping America healthy and performing at its best, what do we find?

The legislative actions in Missouri, and in many states, are promoting some conditions that should cause alarm.

The persistent efforts over the last several years to make the basic right of citizens to cast a vote more difficult than convenient, thereby denying many Americans the opportunity to participate in the direction and policy decisions of their government.

Even when the majority of the state’s citizenry, through the amendment petition process, make their wishes known, some state lawmakers go to exhaustive extremes — deceptive or misleading ballot language, appeals to the judiciary — to undo, evade, ignore or subvert the will of the people.

This is a pattern in Missouri. We saw it with Medicaid expansion and workers’ right to family leave time. Even though the majority of Missourians voted in favor of abortion rights, they will be forced to vote again.

The most pernicious of all are efforts to undermine the petition initiative process — citizens’ direct participation in the democratic process — by instituting insurmountable hurdles, thereby undoing the current requirement of a simple majority of Missourians.

Nationally, are our leaders’ actions consistent with trying to form a more perfect union, ensure domestic tranquility, promote justice and the general welfare for current citizens and future generations?

Our national leadership has dictated, set the pace and given permission for what we see occurring in the states.

We are so eager to celebrate the 250th birthday of the nation in traditional and nontraditional ways, while we ignore, denigrate and dismiss some of the key tenets of the great document that made the day possible, the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

While the Declaration of Independence declares that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that has not been the practice in everyday life.

While America was on the path to try to correct that through ensuring voting rights, instituting DEI and affirmative action programs, equal opportunity and access in many areas of American life, the current administration has made it its top priority to undo them.

Even worse, there are concerted efforts to destroy and revise factual American history — the good and the bad — when it comes to how immigrants built this country, the role of the institution of slavery, the practice of entrenched inequality on many fronts and so much more.

Are the actions of the current government leadership that we the people have installed consistent with these basic tenets?

The current presidential administration has basically governed by edict, executive orders — ignoring the rule of law, neutering, denying or unduly influencing the congressional and judicial branches of government that were established to provide checks and balances.

With what is happening in many states and in Washington, are you clear about who America is today, what it currently stands for and the reasons to celebrate?

The third and most important part in determining the health and well-being of America is the actions of we the people.

The Declaration of Independence is crystal clear about the rights and responsibilities of the people: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Whether at the local, state or national level, the people are not to sit idly by and allow the health of the nation to deteriorate.

We are in the midst of primary elections, readying ourselves to cast defining votes in the midterm elections in November.

Let each of us, as we commemorate the 250th birthday of our nation, take time to truly assess what we are celebrating and why.

More importantly, are the actions of those we have entrusted to provide leadership doing what is necessary to keep America and its values — its laws, principles and rights — safe and strong for another 50, 100 or 250 years for future generations?

If not, what are we willing to do about it?

This story was originally produced by Missouri Independent, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.