By Michael Shook
With the holidays a memory, the New Year upon us, and the light returning, the days are ripe with all manner of possibility. The resolute among us are excited to enact their resolutions. I wish them all success. No resolution for me, since I resolved to give up resolutions some time ago (it’s working well).
What I am excited about is celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday – HUZZAH! I was happy to party along at the 200th, but then I was a callow youth, too young to grasp … ah well, many things. The national birthday was a revel to me, a grand one, but not much else. Now, age has brought with it a deep appreciation and heartfelt gratitude for the country I’m fortunate enough to call my own.
When I consider what the Founders initiated, my mind boggles. Their collective achievements were unprecedented. Imagine the audacity, the courage, the determination and vision, coupled with Herculean labors, required to create the country, all of it aided by a confluence of fortuitous events.
What is taken for granted now was then, for most people, simply unimaginable. And yet … imagine laws agreed upon by the citizens instead of being handed down from on high by a king. Imagine further that the citizens would have a panoply of legal rights simply by virtue of being citizens: the right to own property, the right to worship freely (or not at all), the right to vote in (or vote out!) elected representatives, the presumption of innocence and the right to a trial by peers.
Imagine having freedom of movement, to go where one wishes, when one wishes. Imagine the right to privacy, and the freedom to speak one’s mind. All of which in toto is the recognition that the individual is of value in and of himself, that one is not a thing, a marionette made to dance in whatever way a ruler wishes. Moreover, natural law inheres to us, and so we are fit to govern ourselves by reason of our reason. Thus, the Founders could confidently say, as we can also:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Of course, it can be hard to appreciate the things given us, since it is simply the water we swim in. And the political vagaries of today, if attended to, constitute a noisy distraction from contemplating the riches bequeathed unto us.
Still, we can set aside such distractions, if only temporarily, and, unencumbered by those various lunacies, are free to indulge in contemplation of the great boon granted us. I have been doing just so, and find myself well-pleased.
This, in spite of another bugbear that has gained prominence in some circles. I speak of the plague known as “presentism,” an absurdity usually in play regarding various human rights, or the lack thereof. Because the country was not perfect at its birth (and of course is not now) these “presentists” put history itself on trial and cry out, “Inhumanity! Injustice!” Looking back from a comfortable remove, foolishly judging the past by the present, such voices demand to know, “How could the Founders have been such blockheads?”
The Founders, and the colonists more generally, were hardly blockheads. The colonies were renowned even in England for their erudition – Massachusetts, for example, boasted a 90% literacy rate. But, alas, they were imperfect. And, like all human creations, the nation they brought forth reflected that imperfection. We began in imperfection, grew in imperfection, blossomed into a mighty empire in imperfection, and continue this day as imperfect an instrument of humanity as can be.
The future holds even more imperfection. Yet, some cling to a way of seeing only what was wrong then, which, somehow, makes everything now wrong as well. Theirs is a steadfast refusal to acknowledge reality, the truth that anything humans undertake will be riddled with contradiction; laden with mistakes; and bent beneath a burden of injustice, cupidity, ignorance, sloth, hubris, and every other sinful, low-down behavior we are capable of.
We would be wise to accept, humbly, our deeply flawed humanity. This could then free us to focus on improvements, and so more readily accomplish such improvements. Why so? Because one cannot improve, cannot change, until one recognizes and accepts one’s starting place. Absent that, one just spins one’s wheels. Be assured, I am not suggesting that our mistakes be papered over, not least the most egregious – slavery, driving the Indians nearly to extinction, etc. … Enough of such papering has been done to last lifetimes. But neither should we wallow in a guilt-fest that is useless and counter-productive.
There is another perspective. One of the many wonderfully true and good aspects of life in the United States is that, with the freedoms comprising the posterity handed down to us, bought at great expense by our Founders and ancestors, we can embrace the best parts of ourselves, the best parts of our lives. We are free to choose a path that suits us, to work to achieve goals we set for ourselves, to build communities, to go as far as our efforts will take us. We do have agency, and the choice is ours.
We can tear the nation and each other apart, ranting about the horrors of the past, and using grievance politics to gain power. Or we can acknowledge our humanity and imperfect past, mourn the wrongs committed, and then continue forward with vigorous resolve to do better – a resolution worth keeping, and a path that honors our forebears in this, our nation’s 250th birthday year. HUZZAH!
