My response to an article in the Washington Post on how emotionally and physically brutal was the birth of our nation. The article also emphasized our ongoing struggle to fulfill the dreams and promises of that new nation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/american-revolution-lexington-concord/
I am well aware of the reality that my country is far from perfect. However, I am also aware that nothing human is entirely perfect.
We have struggled. Too often we have failed. Yet we have never entirely forgotten our promise to attain liberty and justice for all.
At this moment in American history we face what is arguably the most serious threat to that promise that we have ever faced. Many of us are eager to throw our democracy down the garbage disposal and flip the switch on. Those of us who can see what is happening must not forget, must not abandon our effort to attain and maintain the ideals that have sustained us through 250 years of struggle.
>Yet the American creation story remains pertinent, vivid and exhilarating, a reminder that we are the beneficiaries of an enlightened political heritage handed down to us from that revolutionary generation. The bequest includes a legacy of personal liberty and strictures on how to divide power and prevent it from concentrating in the hands of authoritarians who think primarily of themselves. We cannot let that heritage slip away. We cannot permit it to be taken away. We cannot be oblivious to this priceless gift, or the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have given their lives to affirm and sustain it over the past two and a half centuries.<
Our nation did not have an easy birth. In so many ways, the emotions of that time are very similar to what we are experiencing today.
>“Everywhere distrust, fear, hatred, and abominable selfishness,” a Lutheran pastor outside Philadelphia wrote. “Parents and children, brothers and sisters, wife and husband were enemies to one another.”<
In spite of this bitter dissent, which tore even families apart during the Revolution and in the Civil War, we endured and ultimately grew closer to fulfilling the promise of our nation. As hopeless as it seems at this moment, we can endure once again and take another step toward the fulfillment of our potential.
