When I wrote about Independence Day too often meaning dependence upon government, I wish I had said something about the value and importance of dependence. I do now. Independence is a value when it frees from bondage, but it always requires a proportionate dependence on something enabling or we will simply exchange one bondage for another.

I did allow that independence, like liberty and freedom, is not an absolute. It is always relative to some reference, i.e., independence from what and, then, dependence upon what? To say, as I did, that we have become a nation of victims depending on entitlements, I sought to remind that the 1776 Declaration of Independence referred to political and economic independence from bondage to Britain, and to assert many of our contemporaries have surrendered to the bondage of the welfare state and other unwholesome dependence upon governments.

I certainly did not mean to imply, or for you to infer, that free Americans are independent in the absolute. We are a nation, and nationhood is about dependence — but not dependence upon yet another government. The American revolutionaries resolved to depend upon themselves. They advocated, first, reliance upon the abilities and capabilities of the individual. A rugged individualism, a pioneering spirit, was an early hallmark of post-colonial Americans.

As characteristic was the community of individualists. They grew and lived as families. Families formed neighborhoods. Neighborhoods related to each other to constitute towns and counties. The thirteen colonies became self-governing states, and new states were added rapidly.

They expected a man to provide for his own family and for all family members to participate in their subsistence. When the particular task was more than they could handle, such as during serious illness or injury, the larger family and neighbors supplemented the nuclear family. Eventually, whole communities developed, and they elected officials to lead the community for the common good.

Their dependence was both mutual and reciprocal. They helped each other, and one individual contributed what he had or was able to do for what another had or was able to do. The farmer traded fresh milk for furniture from the cabinet maker. The carpenter repaired the barber’s roof and was paid a haircut.

The American colonists did well in seeking independence from Britain because they were taxed to raise funds for spending in which they were not represented. Becoming an independent nation, however, did not relieve them of taxation. They consciously and purposefully became dependent upon self-taxation. What made it acceptable is they were directly represented in the decisions as to amounts and purposes.

Just as individuals and individual families sometimes need to depend upon the larger family or neighbors, neighborhoods and communities sometimes need to depend upon local government. Fire, police, and public health are obvious examples. These, in turn, may need to depend upon state and even national government. Here, we think of road systems and military defense.

In the American experience, however, at least two qualifications are needed. We expect not only individuals and families but also neighbors and communities to be self-dependent to the extent possible. Only then do we expect them to depend upon a yet larger body.

Second, government is us. As one put it less than one hundred years after independence, we are a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” We lose our independence when government thinks it is “us” and the citizens are “them.” When we talk of government as “them,” we have abdicated our independence or, at least, allowed it to be taken from us.

American independence, then, means mutual and reciprocal dependence upon each other. The obligation of each individual is to be dependable.