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Dennis Prager has an idea for a Fourth of July Seder. The importance of the Seder can be learned here.
Four years ago, I wrote a column titled “America Needs a July Fourth Seder.” In it I explained that “national memory dies without national ritual. And without a national memory, a nation dies.” Many readers and listeners to my radio show responded by creating their own rituals to make the day far more meaningful than watching fireworks and eating hot dogs.
I now present a simple ten-minute ceremony that every American can easily use on July Fourth. It is a product of the Internet-based Prager University that I founded nearly two years ago. We call it the Fourth of July Declaration and here it is. (A paginated and printable version can be downloaded here.)
It begins with a note to the individual leading the ritual, the “host.”
NOTE TO HOST
We hope this day finds you, your family, and your friends in good health, enjoying another glorious Fourth together. We all love barbecues, parties, and fireworks, but if that’s all the Fourth of July is about, the day has lost its meaning and we lose a vital connection to our American past.Welcome to our Fourth of July Declaration! . . .
And, Andrew Malcolm provides the text of the Declaration of Independence.
. . . When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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,
— 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. . . .