In
the first line of the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, Thomas
Jefferson speaks of “one people.” The Constitution, agreed upon by the Founding
Fathers in Philadelphia in 1789, begins, “We the people…”
And
who were these “people”?
In
Federalist No. 2, John Jay writes of them as “one united people … descended
from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same
religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their
manners and customs…”
If
such are the elements of nationhood and peoplehood, can we still speak of
Americans as one nation and one people?
We
no longer have the same ancestors. They are of every color and from every
country. We do not speak one language, but rather English, Spanish and a host
of others. We long ago ceased to profess the same religion. We are Evangelical
Christians, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus
and Buddhists, agnostics and atheists.
Federalist
No. 2 celebrated our unity. Today’s elites proclaim that our diversity is our
strength. But is this true or a tenet of trendy ideology?
After
the attempted massacre of Republican Congressmen at that ball field in
Alexandria, Fareed Zakaria wrote: “The political polarization that is ripping
this country apart” is about “identity … gender, race, ethnicity, sexual
orientation (and) social class.” He might have added — religion, morality,
culture and history.
Zakaria
seems to be tracing the disintegration of our society to that very diversity
that its elites proclaim to be its greatest attribute: “If the core issues are
about identity, culture and religion … then compromise seems immoral. American
politics is becoming more like Middle Eastern politics, where there is no
middle ground between being Sunni or Shiite.”
Among
the issues on which we Americans are at war with one another — abortion,
homosexuality, same-sex marriage, white cops, black crime, Confederate
monuments, LGBT rights, affirmative action.
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Was
the discovery of America and conquest of this continent from 1492 to the 20th
century among the most glorious chapters in the history of man? Or was it a
half-millennium marked by mankind’s most scarlet of sins: the genocide of
native peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the annihilation of indigenous
cultures, the spoliation of a virgin land?
Is
America really “God’s Country”? Or was Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah
Wright, justified when, after 9/11, he denounced calls of “God Bless America!”
with the curse “God Damn America!”?
With
its silence, the congregation seemed to assent.
In
1954, the Pledge of Allegiance many of us recited daily at the end of noon
recess in the schoolyard was amended to read, “one nation, under God,
indivisible.”
Are
we still one nation under God? At the Democratic Convention in Charlotte to
renominate Barack Obama, a motion to put “God” back into the platform was
hooted and booed by half the assembly.
With
this July 4 long weekend, many writers have bewailed the animus Americans exhibit
toward one another and urged new efforts to reunite us. Yet, recall again those
first words of Jefferson in 1776:
“When
in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bands which have connected them…”
Are
we approaching such a point? Could the Constitution, as currently interpreted,
win the approval of two-thirds of our citizens and three-fourth of our states,
if it were not already the supreme law of the land? How would a national
referendum on the Constitution turn out, when many Americans are already
seeking a new constitutional convention?
All
of which invites the question: Are we still a nation? And what is a nation?
French writer Ernest Renan gave us the answer in the 19th century:
“A
nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things … constitute this soul,
this spiritual principle. One is the past, the other is the present. One is the
possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present
consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the
heritage that we have jointly received.
“Of
all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate: our ancestors have
made us what we are. A heroic past with great men and glory … is the social
capital upon which the national idea rests. These are the essential conditions
of being a people: having common glories in the past and a will to continue
them in the present; having made great things together and wishing to make them
again.”
Does
this sound at all like us today?
Watching
our Lilliputians tearing down statues and monuments, renaming buildings and
streets, rewriting history books to replace heroes and historical truths with
the doings of ciphers, are we disassembling the nation we once were?
“One
loves in proportion to the sacrifices that one has committed and the troubles
that one has suffered,” writes Renan, “One loves the house that one has built
and that one passes on.”
Are
we passing on the house we inherited — or observing its demolition?
Happy
Fourth. And God bless the USA.
