On this 4th of July, We Need Independence Once Again

David De Hart's Independence Day 2025 Report

Photo by David De Hart

We need independence from our undemocratic Constitution that has allowed a minority to threaten and decimate the lives of its citizens (born here or naturalized) and the lives of immigrants (with or without documentation). Saving our so-called democracy will only fail when we have no democracy.

Those who stand by the belief that our government is democratic might consider the following.

The Senate, one of the most undemocratic institutions in our system of government, passed The Big Ugly bill by one vote cast by JD Vance to break the tie. This bill condemns millions to premature death as billions of dollars go to billionaires and the military. The House passed the bill by only four votes to make it the cruelest, most destructive piece of legislation that attacks all who reside here. Congress has no decency. We have a system of government that does not serve its people; it destroys them.

A Dec. 5, 2022, NYT article states: “Today, California has 68 times as many residents as Wyoming; 53 times as many as Alaska; and at least 20 times as many as another 11 states… The 50 Democratic senators effectively represent 186 million Americans, while the 50 Republican senators effectively represent 145 million. To win Senate control, Democrats need to win substantially more than half of the nationwide votes in Senate elections.” The statistics are worse today. Conservative old white men, far from representing the majority of Americans, serve as morticians sending good legislation to the Senate graveyard.

I often ask people what democracy means to them. Rarely do I hear mentioned a system based on the democratic principle of “one person, one equal vote.” Without it, no government can claim to be democratic.

The Senate violates that principle, and so does the Electoral College. Gerrymandering defies the principle, yet was sanctioned by a political Supreme Court that has too much power with justices who serve for life and a majority who base their decisions on ideology, not justice. The President issues sanctimonious Executive Orders that violate the most sacred rights of due process and habeas corpus. None of which would fly in a democratic system.

Martin Luther King accurately stated in his 1967 “Beyond Vietnam” speech that the US was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. It still is today. Our government has destroyed Middle Eastern countries for decades, is complicit with genocide in Gaza by sending bombs to Israel, and committed an act of war by bombing Iran without a declaration of war that only Congress can issue.

In his 1968 instructive book that would be his last, “Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community,” King identifies four major problems that our government embraces: poverty, racism, materialism, and militarism. It does so because we have a government of minority rule. Congress has two corrupt parties that take bribes and marching orders from corporations, banks, the wealthy, the Military Industrial Complex, and AIPAC.

“A civilization can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy,” King wrote. Today, the United States has a staggering level of income and wealth inequality, higher than most other developed countries. King stated, “If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.”

Defending and clinging to the Constitution is just that. The Constitution put Trump into office and has failed in every way to provide effective avenues to curb his unlawful use of power and to send him packing, while the Supreme Court has enhanced his power.

We do not live in a democratic country. Americans must resist in every non-violent way to call out the abuses and violations of the law. There is no saving a democracy we do not have. We must create one.

On this 4^th of July, it would be wise to remember the words of the Declaration of Independence: “…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.”

I want independence from an archaic document that cannot solve the problems of the 21^st Century. We need a democratic system that works for the majority of Americans. Only a democratic Constitution, based on one person, one equal vote, will give real power to the people.