I read with great interest the plan to create a permanent 9/11 memorial amid the controversy about flying the American flag over our lovely Nashawannuck Pond.
Probably too late, but I do wonder — with the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence upon us — if Easthampton might consider erecting a memorial to the document, the people and the war that led to our creation as a nation.
A 9/11 memorial is a beautiful idea, but it can reenforce our sense of ourselves as a nation of victims, as we were on that day. And while 9/11 was a major historical event in America’s rollercoaster 21st century, do we now find ourselves in need of a 9/11 memorial, when it is the very values and meaning of the Declaration of Independence that most perplexes us as a nation on its semiquincentennial?
For example, it is often forgotten that our Revolutionary War was a war not for freedom, but for independence from Great Britain. What freedom means we have been arguing and fighting about ever since, and that debate is more important now than ever.
Too many Americans dismiss its central idea that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, amongst these Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” A celebration of that document would allow us to see both how short-sighted these men were, and how visionary as well. All their failings as men, slave holders, rich landowners, were not sealed in that document; rather, the ability of future generations to interpret and re-interpret those words was the purpose. Many liberals insist that “pursuit of happiness” — perhaps the document’s most beautiful phrase — meant owning property and it cannot mean anything else. But its meaning is what each generation of Americans must decide, over, and over again.
When we stop doing that, as perhaps we are, we will lose our North Star, as perhaps we are. And we will continue to drift further and further away — not from our founding document, but from any sense of why the United States came into existence and thus where its future lays.
A 9/11 memorial, granted, would be easier to erect. And maybe that is the flavor of our era: it is easier to remember victims than to emulate revolutionaries. But truly, wouldn’t a 9/11 memorial be looking backwards in time, while a celebration for the Declaration of Independence must be forward looking?
Joe Gannon
Easthampton