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I doubt I can say something about America on its 250th anniversary that hasn’t been said already. But that’s no reason to stop talking to ourselves about our country. We benefit from repeating important things. No one wants to hear “I love you” just once.
My editor, Jess Wyeth, suggested my column take the form of a love letter to America. I said that maybe what America needs now is a “tough love” letter instead.
In 1926, on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, President Calvin Coolidge observed: “If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.”
A century later, it’s hard to improve on that.
The greatest minds and most eloquent voices in history have spent two and a half centuries trying to capture what makes this country distinct. Statesmen, soldiers, immigrants, entrepreneurs, reformers, pastors, teachers, and ordinary citizens have all taken their turns. Any tribute I offer joins a conversation already rich with wisdom and gratitude.
America’s story is not unique because we are wealthy, powerful, or geographically unique. Other nations have possessed those advantages. America is unique because it was founded on an idea.
Our nation did not slowly stumble into freedom after centuries of trial and error. Freedom was present at the creation. The Declaration of Independence did not announce that government would grant rights to the people. It declared that people already possessed rights and that government existed to secure them.
That conviction is America’s defining characteristic. It demonstrates that America is more than a place or even a people; she is a proposition about human dignity, self-government, and liberty.
We have not always lived up to our ideals, and we’re falling short in important ways now. No honest observer could claim otherwise. Yet one of America’s greatest strengths is that our founding principles provide the standard by which we judge our shortcomings. We do not honor America by lowering those ideals to match our behavior. We honor and exhort America by striving to raise our behavior to meet its ideals.
Generations of Americans have been shaped by that aspiration.
It also explains a truth often overlooked. Democracy matters. Elections matter. Institutions matter. Free speech — that great self-corrective tool — matters. But America’s first commitment is not to majority rule alone. It is to liberty. Self-government — in our homes, communities, states and nation — is precious because free people govern themselves better than they are governed by others.
President Ronald Reagan often described America using John Winthrop’s phrase, “a shining city upon a hill.” The phrase endured because it captured how many Americans see their country — not as perfect, but as exceptional in its commitment to freedom and its belief that ordinary people can govern themselves.
Freedom — and the civic infrastructure that supports it — is not just a policy preference or arbitrary arrangement. It is part of our national identity. If we fail to inculcate civic literacy in each generation, we will eventually become like every nation whose people wish they could live as we do.
For 250 years, Americans have argued, disagreed, protested, voted, built, worshiped, invented, worked and dreamed under the protection of that freedom. Our task today is the same as it was in 1776: to preserve it, strengthen it, and pass it on.
Though that responsibility is a burden, it is an even greater privilege.
