Dateline: Montgomery, Alabama. November 2, 2020
Tomorrow is election day across these United States. Perhaps today is a good day for reflection on how we go “here.” By “here,” I do no mean the tribalistic, divided, scared, and selfish people that the cynics among us believe that “We the People”[1] have become. Rather, I mean the great nation of people that our Founding Fathers may have envisioned. I use the word, “may,” because sometimes, it is difficult to know exactly what the Founders envisioned. The late Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. stated, “some uncertainty may attend an effort to identify the precise messages” of the founding fathers.[2] Further, Justice Brennan “rejected the ‘arrogance cloaked as humility’ of those relying on the ‘facile historicism’ inherent in the original-intent theory.”[3]
To the majority of Americans, the Founders were heroes who envisioned a nation described in the grand documents they penned.[4] To others, those who came here enslaved and against their will, those who came here “tired . . . poor . . . huddled masses yearning to breathe free, [homeless, tempest-tost,] the wretched refuse of [the world’s] teeming shore,”[5] only to be held incommunicado, in internment camps or outright turned away with or without their young children – not so much.
To some, the United States to a great extent was founded as a Christian nation based upon the Judeo-Christian ethic.[6] However, some historians suggest that the leading Founders (John Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton, and Washington) were “neither Christians nor Deists, but rather supporters of a hybrid ‘theistic rationalism.”[7] Whoever these people were and of whatever religious belief they were seized the wrote words like this:
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,–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.[8]
“Four-score and seven years” later, another Founder, Abraham Lincoln, penned these words by some accounts, on the back of an envelope while riding in a carriage on the way to the dedication of the Civil War cemetery at Gettysburg, PA, the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.[9]
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal”
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow, this ground– The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.
It is rather for us, the living, to stand here, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.[10]
Almost 70 years later, another “Founder,” amid the greatest economic collapse that the country had seen in “modern times”[11] cautioned us about fear. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared:
So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.[12]
Have we so soon forgotten? Have we forgotten that an estimated 6,800 would-be Americans were killed in action, 6,100 wounded, and 20,000 taken prisoner in the cause of freedom during the Revolutionary War?[13]
Have we forgotten that between 618,000 and 750,000 died during the times surrounding Lincoln’s iconic address?[14]
And, can we forget that hope was lost but then regained after Roosevelt’s cautionary remarks during the Great Depression and subsequent world war?
People are born alone but with labor and travail.
They die sometimes with the “boom, whoosh, sizzle” of an atomic bomb, and
Sometimes silently in the night with but an unheard whimper.
Empires rise in grandeur with trumpets blaring
and fall in ignominy accompanied by a chorus of hisses and boos.
Nations parade into history at noonday elegantly mounted upon snow-white Arabian stallions,
Only to slink and skulk back out bedraggled and yelping like whipped dogs in the dead of night.
“We the People” are such a people, are such an empire, are such a nation.
Perhaps, the greatest failure, the most tragic forfeiture, the coarsest fizzle,
Of a people, of an empire, of a nation,
Is not the loss of their wealth, not the loss of their status, not the loss even of their lives –
But the loss of their memory.
Forgetting is easy, remembering is hard – depending upon that which you choose to forget, upon that which you choose to remember. The Italian poet, Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) famously remarked, “Memories are hunting horns whose sound dies on the wind.” Sometimes the sound of those “hunting horns,” is as Shakespeare might say, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,”[15] maybe best forgot.
But sometimes – but sometimes – but sometimes – there are things that must never be forgot.
As you step behind that curtain on Tuesday, as you pick up that pen, as you make your mark for history to record, I challenge you to stop and to remember. Remember the people that we, that you, once were, that we, that you, are, that we, that you, can be. The choice is yours – and yours alone.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
[1] U.S. Const., Preamble.
[2] The Hon. William J. Brennan, Jr. Address to Georgetown University, (October, 1985.)
[3] Kaufman, Irving J. “WHAT DID THE FOUNDING FATHERS INTEND?” The New York Time Magazine, (February 23, 1986, Section 6, Page 42.)
[4] E.g. The Federalist Papers, Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, “Common Sense,” The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
[5] Lazarus, Emma. “The New Colossus” the second verse of which is inscribed in part at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
[6] Holmes, David L. The Faiths of the Founding Fathers. Oxford University Press. (2006.)
[7] Frazer, Gregg L. The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders: Reason, Revelation, and Revolution. University Press of Kansas. (2012.)
[8] Preamble to the Declaration of Independence (1776) drafted principally by Thomas Jefferson and edited by the “Committee of Five” chosen by the Second Continental Congress: John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Roger Sherman of Connecticut. In later years, the Committee’s members, which took no notes, disagreed as to the exact meaning they intended and the process they followed. See Maier, Pauline, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. (1998.)
[9] Rawley, James A. Turning Points of the Civil War. University of Nebraska Press. (1966.)
[10] Lincoln, President Abraham. “The Gettysburg Address.” (November 19, 1863.)
[11] Bondarenko, Peter. “Five of the World’s Most Devastating Financial Crises.” Encyclopedia Britannica.
[12] Roosevelt, Franklin D, “First Inaugural Address,” (March 4, 1933.)
[13] American Battlefield Trust, “How Many were Killed or Wounded?”
[14] Hacker, J. David. “Recounting the Dead.” The New York Times. (September 20, 2011.)
[15] Shakespeare, William, “Macbeth.” (1623,) Act V, Page 5, Scene 2.
johnthebaptist15 