'Our Native Bumptiousness and Ebulliation'

The best thing about Independence Day in the United States is that no one is obligated to observe it. And if you do, regardless of how eccentrically or offensively, that’s your business. Don’t impose your protest or drunken shenanigans on me or my family but otherwise you have carte blanche to express your patriotism, or its absence, as you wish. That’s what “the freedom of speech” and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” mean, according to the First Amendment of our Constitution. For much of my life, the Fourth of July started with a parade. While living in upstate New York, that meant driving to Pittsfield, Mass., for its annual Fourth of July Parade, a tradition that started in 1801, just twenty-five years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. One year I watched a rather ample-figured U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy amble behind the American Legion band and glad-hand the crowd. A year later I stood on the sidewalk beside the singer Michael McDonald, chatting…