By David Hegg

I love July 4 and all it stands for. I remember lying on my back in a massive park in Boise, Idaho, watching the magnificent fireworks display that ended our 1976 Bicentennial celebration. As a young college student, I was proud of our nation, proud of our heritage, and even prouder that I could have a part in the next generation of American achievement.

But I fear independence as a personal right is slowly undermining the freedom intended initially by the forefathers who dared put power in the hands of the public.

Independence as a national value was never intended to cancel out the need for personal interdependence among our country’s citizenry. Our democracy was built on the supposition that for America to be great, we must be good, with “good” being measured by standards of decency and love of neighbor arising from the Judeo-Christian world.

Today, independence is not seen as freedom from foreign dominance as much as it is understood to grant individual freedom from external restraint. Under this nuanced sense of........

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