What We Forget When We Remember Ourselves

Every Fourth of July I get this itch — not to dunk on the country I love, but to scratch at the paint and see what’s underneath. To lift the floorboards, find the roaches, and point out that this grand old house we celebrate didn’t get built by one guy with a hammer.

The American story is the greatest solo act ever told. Lone hero, lone cowboy, lone genius. We love it. We teach it in schools, we wrap it around our boots and our beers. Independence Day itself is practically a national tattoo that says: “We did it alone.”

But the truth is that independence was born out of interdependence. You don’t have to be a cynic to admit it — just an adult.

Start with the Revolution. The French didn’t show up with baguettes and hot air balloons; they showed up with a navy that made Yorktown possible. The decisive siege that ended the war? French ships blocked the British from getting supplies or reinforcements. Admiral de Grasse’s fleet outnumbered the Royal Navy at the Chesapeake. Rochambeau’s 5,000 troops fought alongside Washington’s. And yet how many stars-and-stripes parties this week will have a single French flag? We remember the ragtag farmers; we forget the ships and the loans and the French sailors buried far from home.

Move forward to WWII. Our national myth goes something like: we parachuted into Europe, kicked Hitler in the teeth, handed out chocolate bars, and went home heroes. Did we matter? Of course we did — but the Soviet Union lost upwards of 20 million people grinding the Nazi war machine to a pulp on the Eastern Front long before we waded onto the beaches at Normandy. Stalingrad alone saw two million casualties. Eighty percent of German military deaths happened over there, not over here. The Red Army did the bleeding; we did the liberating — and the remembering, mostly just of ourselves.

And what about the ideas we cling to? Liberty, Equality, Fraternity — the French didn’t just send ships, they sent the Enlightenment. Franklin didn’t hole up in London when he wanted revolutionary inspiration; he lived in Paris. Jefferson, Adams, the whole founding crowd were drinking deep from Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire. Our DNA is part Parisian salon, part colonial farm. But we tell the story like we invented the ideals out of thin New England air.

This is not about tearing down the Fourth of July. I’ll watch the fireworks too, maybe get misty when the rockets glare. But while we’re celebrating our freedom, I’d like to remember who else paid the bill. Because the American experiment, the thing that survived King George, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, and whatever comes next — it never stands alone. It never did.

Civil wars, revolutions, world wars — none of them happen in a vacuum. They’re proxy fights, alliance fights, dirty trades of blood and treasure. America stuck its toe in Afghanistan to break the Soviets. France stuck its whole boot in our revolution to break the British. Someday, if we ever break ourselves in another civil mess, do you think the world won’t come poking around? Mexico, China, Russia, Europe — everyone will have a stake.

History is not a lone genius with a patent. It’s a crowded lab. It’s the professor taking credit for the breakthrough while the grad students wash the beakers. And if we keep forgetting the beaker-washers, the next time we need a partner, they might just stay home.

So raise your flag. Cheer the myth. But spare a thought for the French sailor in the Chesapeake, the Soviet grunt at Stalingrad, the philosopher in a Paris café who gave our founders their slogans. A Declaration of Independence, sure — but one signed with borrowed ink.