America: Strength In Adversity

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.