You’re familiar with the Liberty Bell, right?
Big bell with a crack in it. On display in Philadelphia. Long associated with the American Revolution, though there’s no evidence it was rung at any significant event. One of those confused quirks of history, like George Washington’s mythic chopping down a cherry tree.
Do you know what’s written on the Liberty Bell? I won’t keep you in suspense: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
A line from Leviticus 25. A passage that, in some ways, is about farming. Every seventh year is to be a”sabbath” — the land will not be planted, but lie fallow —a smart agricultural practice, essential before advanced fertilizers.
And every seventh sabbath, 7 x 7, the 50th year would be a “jubilee.”
What was a jubilee? Big party? Lots of back-patting? Maybe. The Hebrew word for jubilee, yovel, means ram’s horn, or trumpet, the way news was blasted across the desert. A cue taken in English: jubilee is from the Latin jubilo, or “shout of joy.” That’s where we get “jubilation.”
They weren’t shouting general self-praise, not self-assigned greatness, but about something real. Something big. The jubilee year was sort of a societal reset, when all debts would be forgiven, slaves freed, seized lands returned. A fresh start for those downtrodden by life. It was about humbling the mighty, not building them up further.
“Do not take advantage of each other,” Leviticus urges.
Not quite, I feel comfortable saying, the spirit we find afoot in the land today, during our American quintuple jubilee, the 250th anniversary of a country, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” No need to spell it out. Either you understood long ago or you never will.
For an agnostic — never an atheist, they’re zealots too — whenever I read the Bible, I find myself wishing others did in the spirit of finding a code of conduct for themselves, rather than just a cudgel to harass those they don’t like anyway. For those of you arguing over who owns any particular plot of land, here or abroad, over who got there first, securing inviolable rights to the end of time, the Lord God Almighty has news for you.
“The land is mine,” He says, quite plainly, “and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.”
Some more than others. Journalism has gotten a jump on July 4, and the thumb-twiddlers I’ve read seem to fall into two camps — the mournful and the hopeful. Mournful because of all the liberty-shredding that has torn our nation apart for the past 17 months. Hopeful because, well, we’ve still got America, with noble ideals but bad things in our past. A cracked bell. We’re a country that permitted slavery for 80 years, then ended it. Where women couldn’t vote until they wrested away the right to a ballot. A clarion of liberty whose ring is muffled by an enormous flaw.
So which do we focus on? The bell or the crack?
A question long debated. If you visit the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia — and you should, it’s free — make sure to slide into Independence Hall. There you can see the mahogany armchair where George Washington sat for three months in the summer of 1787. Same chair, with a sun carved into the back.
The National Park Ranger leading our tour — Helen McKenna — quoted Benjamin Franklin.
“I have often looked at that behind the president,” Franklin wrote, “without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting.” She said that Franklin decided that it was indeed a rising sun, then asked: But what about now? Would you agree with Franklin? Is the American sun rising or setting?
National Park ranger Helen McKenna, giving a tour in 2015, holds a blowup of the back of George Washington’s chair, next to the candlestick at her right. Even as our nation was being founded, its leaders wondered whether the American sun was rising or setting, a question still relevant today.
Neil Steinberg/Sun-Times
“What would you say to him?” she asked, “And what examples would you cite?”
This was in 2015, when park rangers were encouraged to write their own tours, to challenge visitors to think hard about our history — she had already asked the room to divide up between those who feel the law protects our freedoms, and those who feel the law constrains them.
Nowadays, of course, the government sees history as bland patriotic pap to spoon colicky babies.
My answer? I’d say they’re of a piece — a cracked bell, with neither crack nor bell predominating.
It is a question of framing. The sun rises, then sets, then rises again. It never keeps rising, forever, which is why happy talk history is always wrong. Steady progress is not what history is about. More of what is called a “Toynbee Curve” after the English historian Arnold Toynbee — progress, followed by setback. Rise, then fall, then rise again, an endless cycle. The American sun is rising, generally. Though lately, not so much.