The first of my annual Independence Day reflection posts, in 2012, was not posted on or around July 4, but in September. This year, I renew that tradition – I plead that I was working furiously to finish my dissertation throughout July and August. I will still have revisions to make, but the main job is (Lord willing!) now over.

Part of the point of that original post was that the things that make America worth fighting for are things that don’t necessarily turn up where (or in this case when) you expect to see them. That is the whole point of America, as Charles’ own story illustrates:

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit to you that in the game of life, Ray Charles was dealt just about as bad a hand as it’s possible to get. He was born into the worst sort of poverty America had to offer in 1930; the son of sharecroppers in rural Georgia. He was a black man in the deep south; enough said. He started losing his sight at age five due to glaucoma, and was completely blind at age seven.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I defy you to show me any nation in the whole history of this world where that blind, black son of sharecroppers grows up to be Ray Charles. He was a superstar so huge that I can’t even begin to convey to you how huge he was without just copying and pasting his whole (impressively long) list of accomplishments on Wikipedia. If you’ve never seen it, pop on over and take a look. This is not just about selling millions of records – although God bless the man for selling millions of records! But this is about a true creative master, a man who left an indelible stamp on every genre of music. (Every genre? Sure. Try and tell me with a straight face that today’s country music wasn’t influenced by the soul sound Ray Charles and his peers invented in midcentury.)

From the long list, I’ll just put this one sample out there: Frank Sinatra – Frank Sinatra! – called Ray Charles “the only true genius in show business.”

The old songs – even the national anthem – may well be past saving as central cultural products. But we can always make new cultural products. And we clearly have deep resources upon which to draw. If it’s the good, true and beautiful you’re looking for, a country in which Ray Charles can grow up to be Ray Charles has a lot to offer.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, America has Ray Charles.

The defense rests.

I have spent ten years offering thoughts every Independence Day reflecting on the hopeful realism at the heart of that original post, with twists and turns into related subjects, and now on the tenth year since that original post I want to clear away the distractions and return to the original question:

Is there an America left worth saving?

Thinking today about the passing of Queen Elizabeth, I am reminded of all that we gave up when we chose to fight for our independence all those July 4s ago. Boris Johnson, whatever you think of him, gives a great speech, and he puts his finger right on the key issue:

Can we have democracy if we don’t have a living figure who represents the unity of the nation and the continuity of our traditions? Mustn’t all the symbols we rely on – the flag, the anthem, the Constitution itself – succumb to the fierce polarization that is congenital to all democracy, no matter how liberal?

But notice the subtext of his concluding passage about King Charles. He expresses robust hope that Charles will follow in his mother’s footsteps, and the house expresses robust assent.

Both he and they are really sending a message: “You’d better follow in your mother’s footsteps.”

It’s far, far too late.

Not only because of his personal scandals, although those do matter.

Charles has long been a highly ideological political activist. He has not, in fact, stood above the fray in the way his mother did.

And that’s a genie you can’t just put back in the bottle. Britons can now pretend they don’t know what Charles is, but they know, and everyone knows they know (most of all, he does).

Tocqueville was right. The solid rock of Elizabeth’s leadership – and if you want to know where that came from, it’s no secret, for she told us over and over again – could slow down the acid of democratic equality. Eventually, though, all the traditions will be eaten.

We must somehow learn how to make our way in a world where the controlling political commitments are equality and freedom – which means human rights – and where all political action must be philosophically justified on that basis.

That’s the whole reason Charles is an activist. The traditions simply aren’t self-justifying any more. In a world where equality and freedom have been made available, some argument must be made for anything not built on that basis.

Some people say, “he’s so privileged, how can he be so irresponsible about showing respect for the traditions that give him his privilege?” But the more privileged he is, the more he feels obligated to find some legitimization for that privilege. It seems clear to me that his political crusades aren’t an idiosyncratic personal hobby in his eyes, although that is how some others see them; they are there because the old world in which people felt no need to justify their traditions is unsustainable in the era of the smartphone.

The American experiment is still an experiment, and it may fail.

But if we fail, the world will not be well until someone, somewhere, succeeds.

May God continue to bless the beautiful, powerful people of Taiwan, of Ukraine, and of every other Tom Doniphon country in our Brave New World.

While we wait for our Ransom Stoddard.