I have to begin this week’s Perspective with a confession.
This week’s blog isn’t the one I hoped to write. In fact, I feel kind of like I failed in what I set out to accomplish. But that’s okay, sometimes we all must stretch ourselves even if we come up short.
I wanted this week’s essay to be something special, something worthy of a historic moment. Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and this year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That’s a remarkable milestone in our nation’s history.
I wanted to contribute something meaningful to the conversation about America and what this anniversary represents. Part of my motivation was that I’ve been disappointed by much of the conversation surrounding it. Too often it has become political instead of historical, divisive instead of thoughtful.
I wanted to write something historical, not political. I wanted to teach, not preach.
I tried. I really did try.
I wrote. I rewrote. I started over more times than I can count. But the harder I worked, the more I realized that this moment deserves more wisdom than I have to offer. Every draft seemed to drift toward sounding preachy or partisan, and that wasn’t what I wanted.
So instead of asking you to read my thoughts this Independence Day, I’d rather point you toward words that have stood the test of time. Some ideas don’t need to be improved upon—they simply need to be read again.
The Declaration of Independence
“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…”
Read the whole thing.
The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Read the whole thing.
Abraham Lincoln – First Inaugural Address
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.’
“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Abraham Lincoln – Annual Message to Congress (1862)
“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation…We—even we here—hold the power and bear the responsibility…. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.”
Abraham Lincoln – Second Inaugural Address
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Theodore H. White – The American Idea
“But what is most important is the story of the idea that made them into a nation, the idea that had an explosive power undreamed of in 1776.”
“All other nations had come into being among people whose families had lived for time out of mind on the same land where they were born. Englishmen are English, Frenchmen are French, Chinese are Chinese…But Americans are a nation born of an idea; not the place, but the idea created the United States Government.”
That is my perspective this week.
Where I have failed, others have already succeeded. Sometimes the best thing a writer can do is recognize that wiser voices have already said it better. Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, those words—and the words of those who followed—still challenge us, inspire us, and remind us that the American story has always been one worth studying.
There is always wisdom to be found. We just have to be willing to look for it.
Have a wonderful Fourth of July.
Until next Friday,
C. Tuescher
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