I was thinking about the significance of today’s date when a
question came to mind: If I could have a conversation with the men who started
this country, what would I tell them? What questions would I have? Would I
complain about our country as it stands today? Would I simply say thank you? Or
would I tell them with pride about our strength in adversity? I envisioned a
conversation with men such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin
Franklin, and so many others, and it went a little bit like this:
What do you get when you combine a bunch of impoverished farmers
and tenacious self-governed men, throw in a seven page government, and add a
plethora of patriotism? That’s the first question I would have for the
brilliant men that fought for and envisioned a great union. I would then
proceed to tell them the tales of our pits and peaks, the best we’ve given, and
the extent of our loss.
I would start with the impact of the government they built in the
short amount of time that they had. How could they possibly have known that
seven pages of well thought out statements of how to run a country would last
all these years? Who would have guessed that people who couldn’t even find the
importance of bathing could write up a document that would be the government of
the greatest country in the world? Even now, with the nearly ridiculous
technology of today, we use that old document.
I would have to explain 1861, when our own country was divided
over something that now seems completely absurd. The very notion of one man
owning another is ludicrous to our culture. I would mention 1865, when one of
our country’s greatest presidents was killed by an acrimonious southerner: the
first presidential assassination. I would talk about how the twentieth century began
with World War I. I would tell the tales of the way we drafted the bravest men known
as “heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than selves their country
loved and mercy more than life,” and how they fought side by side, brothers
among brothers, with the British to protect what they, our founding fathers,
believed was self –evident.
I would speak of Korea and Vietnam,
Iraq and Afghanistan, and all the other places our country’s best have gone for
freedom and liberty’s sake. I would talk about the omnipotent God in whom we trust
and believe and how he has protected us even as evil has unleashed its fury on
us, much the way it did when two commercial jets crashed into our World Trade Center
and left their shrapnel in our hearts forever. I would tell them how we
wouldn’t rest until we had been avenged, and we were successful. I would
explain the wars that followed, and the life lost every day since the signing
of the Declaration of Independence for the cause of life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.
I would thank them profusely for
their unprecedented example. This group of men did something no one had ever
even attempted before, and I would have to say they did an amazing job. With
only words on paper and a love for something they could hardly understand, they
created this nation, and that same love has kept it alive through all of these
hardships and all of this time.
I would end by saying proudly that it’s
been a long, tough journey, and it’s not over yet. We’ve fought long and hard;
we’ve won and we’ve lost. We’ve mourned as a nation so many times and fought
through so much adversity. We’ve made some compromises along the way, and some
of our values have reformed with the rest of civilization. However, this is our
home. This is one nation under God. This is the United States of America, the
land of the free and the home of the brave.
