The Declaration of Independence
Hello Friends,
I rose this morning to coffee and silence. In considering this day, the 4th of July, I think back across so many July 4th celebrations, even back to harbors filled with four-masted sailing ships, to heads covered with tri-corner hats and filled with dreams of liberty and freedom. Long is the struggle, and it is good to take a day to consider past victories and rouse courage to continue the fight. That first 4th of July was a beachhead of no less magnitude than the landing at Normandy, but magnificently fewer were they. Among the floundering throngs wandered the few who knew; the few who had learned and remembered; who lifetime upon so many lifetimes had banded together and dispersed, yet ever passing the flame forward. The long trek out of Asia, through the Middle East, into a smoldering Europe was the beleaguered path travelled. We were like ships at sea, each on its own journey, but seeing another in the distant horizon harbored hope. Hope that someday the great diaspora[1] of the brotherhood of freedom and liberty would end. A hope that a coalescing of the guardians of human freedom would again sip the sweet wine of common action and cast away the grim prospect of another lonely defeat.
Then, on this continent, visited long before Columbus by the sailing fleets of China, of Phoenicia, and of the Templars, again the dream manifested in action. The vision is old, ever rising and falling with the tides of history, ignorance and suppression. The eternal manifestation of the human spirit rises again in redolent[2] defiance. Again, the cry of the human spirit bursts forth, ”Kill me if you will, but I will not yield.”
Now, with a hot dog in one hand and a beer in the other, we look forward. We look to the challenge; to the freeing of the slumbering masses, the good and decent, whose hope, long submerged beneath countless failures, awaits reincarnation. Again, we gather. Again, we plot. Again, we muster and move forward. Again, the foes of freedom, legion and covert, circle in the dark. Now we continue what we have begun. Inch by inch, foot by foot, and being by being, we grasp back the land lost to blinding ignorance and annihilating despair. On this day we can look; we can see the battle shift; we can see the enemy, in fear, call for reinforcement as our forces advance. We see in the future the gathering and arming of our new troops. There, midst the smoke and thunder of the moment, we see victory.
Today is a good day to celebrate, to recall, to resurrect and refresh the goals of liberty and freedom, the necessary swaddling garments[3] of nascent spiritual regeneration. It is good to see, on this 4th of July, 2025–good to look back, and better to look forward.
Roger Buss
4 July, 2025
[1] “diaspara” means the dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland.
[2] “redolent” means strongly reminiscent or suggestive of something
[3] “swaddle” means to wrap a baby tightly in cloth or blankets. “Swaddling garments”, then, are the cloth or blankets used to wrap the child in.
Born in 1942 and a published poet, Roger Buss has been writing for many years; his works uniformly reflecting his care and concern for his fellow man, as well as his grasp of man’s spiritual nature. In Roger’s own words: “My early training was in philosophy, but philosophic insights are often best expressed poetically; thus I prefer the poem, and occasionally the essay. I trust that what I write resonates with a truth you already possess. The race of man is in trouble. Influences mostly beyond his sight and grasp seek his detriment and ultimate enslavement. Let each of us speak and write the truth we know–therein lies the counter attack. The race of man is worth helping. I do what I can do. I write.”