First and foremost, Happy Independence Day from the crew at DCW to you and yours. Play safe and enjoy.

May your day be filled with relaxation, good friends and cool fireworks. Or however you celebrate!

But it’s important to think about some things that may have slipped your mind in considering the historical elements of our country’s formation. For example, this week California passed and signed into law the most stringent vaccination law in the land. Do you know the relationship of that to Boston in July of 1776?

Here you go:

But a flashback to our nascent nation in the summer of 1776 — when liberty was pretty much the topic of the day — can reveal just how long the debate over government health policies has been running, and how the meaning of “freedom” has changed when it comes to access to preventive medicine. In Boston, the first Independence Day was preceded by inoculation day, when the Massachusetts general court abolished a ban on inoculating people against small pox. Only people who wanted to be inoculated or had already had the disease were allowed in the city.  (Source)

Yup – public health was an issue during the birth of our country.

Which brings me to things that a lot of people think are true, but aren’t. Most pressing on my mind is the issue of the Confederate flag. It was NEVER a flag of the Confederacy or any of the states part of that group. Rather, it was a battle flag that didn’t get any traction until the KKK started using it in the 1920’s. And yet, 57% of Americans see the flag as a symbol of “southern pride” as opposed to racism. (Source) They’re wrong, of course, but stupid is stupid. If you drill down in the numbers, you’ll find that 73% of African-Americans are not fooled, and as whites attain more education, they too know the truth. That flag is racist.

So here we are, 239 years into being a country. We are far more divided than we were in 1776, when there was a common goal, a set of shared aims. Certainly, there was divided thought: blacks were 3/5 of a person, women didn’t count at all, no respect was paid to Native Americans. But at the time, people were working on these things.

Do something today to be a real American: register someone to vote, talk truth to someone lost in false history, or just a basic act of kindness.