1776 A Myth to Live By (7/4/25)

The story of July 4, 1776, is both fact and myth. It is the day Americans celebrate the Declaration of Independence despite the fact that not every signature was obtained that day. 

Many forget about the significance of April 19, 1775, or the start of the Revolution, which until that point had been about resolving issues of rights and liberties within the British Empire. 

The idea behind the Revolution itself is oversimplified, and had a lot more to do with guns and money than taxes and tea. These stories are a mixture of truth and myth, and they are necessary to found civilization. As Joseph Campbell wrote: “Whenever men have looked for something solid on which to found their lives, they have chosen not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination.” 

The myths of the United States’ founding are so monumental, including mysterious figures who supposedly designed the Great Seal and flag, visions by George Brinton McClellan and George Washington, and even a mystery person who swayed the signers of the Declaration of Independence, that they made it across the ocean to the far east. One Japanese book depicts the likes of George Washington fighting alongside the American goddess in one image and punching a tiger in another, while John Adams summons a giant eagle and kills an enormous snake. These depictions remind us of Apollo killing the python, archangel Michael stabbing the serpent satan, Siegfried killing a dragon, or the Japanese Susanoo killing Yamata no Orochi. The power of myth sometimes shapes historical events as great cataclysms, while other times the latter shape great events. Kingdoms rise and fall in relation to the stars, a comet, an astrological alignment, etc., while omens about natural disasters are explainable by science but confined to the realm of myth, which as Campbell notes, is the “substance of dreams.” 

Some things, however, are not myths, including how James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams all died on the Fourth of July. And the odd synchronicities between Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy. 

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