WHICH IS WHY IT'S FUTILE FOR THE LEFT AND FAR RIGHT...:

The American Promise: From 1776 to Sumter, from Selma to Obama, we've been shaped by the fights for freedom. (Jon Meacham, 1/20/09, Newsweek)

As Barack Obama begins his work as the 44th president of the United States, he is living testament to the possibilities and promise of an America founded in the 18th century, tested in the 19th, triumphant in the 20th and now finding its way in the 21st. Depending on your point of view, the following point is now clichéd or canonical (though, come to think of it, they are not mutually exclusive): the election of the son a Kenyan and a Kansan would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago. One of the spectators on the inaugural stand in Washington was John Lewis, who bears the physical scars of the all-too-recent war to win the right to vote; in historical terms, Selma was only the day before yesterday, Sumter the day before that.

The theme that connects our triumphant and tragic past with the future now unfolding is at once the simplest and most complex of forces in human affairs: the freedom of the individual to decide his own destiny in a republic created by Madison but turned democratic by Jackson. Destiny in an Aristotelian polis, or city, is not only a private matter; one's values and hopes and fears are inextricably connected to the larger community. Hence liberty under law rather than liberty without constraint: that way lies madness.

Our collective sense of freedom, then, is fundamental to who we are but cannot be understood with the reassuring simplicity of fundamentalism. Put another way, freedom is not necessarily permanent; it is fluid, in constant need of redefinition and rethinking, and that work is never done. We are stewards of the revolutionary impulse toward what Washington called "the sacred fire of liberty," but freedom is not a buy-and-hold proposition. When we have been at our best, we have redefined and rethought what freedom means, and what it signifies to say something—or someone—is American.

In the beginning, the definition was clear enough: America was its own nation, master of its own fate, free from imperial rule. When the Declaration was signed—the Founding Fathers, as they were to become, were bedeviled by horseflies during the ceremony—the Virginia state convention in Williamsburg immediately voted to suppress the standard Anglican prayer for the king and the royal family, directing congregations instead to ask God to guide "the magistrates of the commonwealth." In Philadelphia itself, John Adams said, "the bells rung all day and all night." In New York, an ecstatic crowd tore down a statue of George III. General Washington, in command of the Continental Army, was not amused. "The general hopes and trusts," Washington told the troops, speaking in the third person, "that every officer and man will endeavor so to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country."

Among those dear rights and liberties was what FDR would later call the freedom to worship according to the dictates of one's own conscience. At this distance it can be difficult to explain the enormity of then-nascent American tradition of religious liberty, but the right of freedom of conscience—and the Constitution's prohibition against a religious test for federal office—was among the most revolutionary features of a revolutionary time.

To free the mind and the heart from compulsory religious confession and observance was good for all three interested parties: the state, the church and the people. For the state, the removal (mostly) of religious conflicts from the business of government freed the young nation's leaders to focus on other things without the distraction of matters spiritual. For the church, what Jefferson called the wall of separation between church and state in 1802 meant that religion stood a better chance of remaining chiefly concerned with its own affairs rather than becoming, as it so often had in the Old World, a tool of empires and politicians.

Suddenly religious devotion became a choice, not a chore; religion was more vibrant after Jefferson's wall (albeit a very short one) went up.

Slowly, ever slowly, Jefferson's definition of "men" grew. Through what Lincoln called the "fiery trial" of the Civil War, through the miseries of Jim Crow, through the women's suffrage movement, through nativist battles over immigration, we are now, 400 years after the founding of Jamestown, a bigger, freer and in many ways stronger country than we have ever been. That is true now, but may not be true tomorrow: to be repetitive, we require vigilance, redefinition and rethinking to preserve what Reagan used to call, in an evocation of Lincoln, the last, best hope of man on earth.

Such a sentiment may seem out of step with the hip global sensibility of the Age of Obama, but we should not shy away from noting what we have achieved any more than we ought to avoid the tasks of social and moral recovery ahead. As Patrick Henry said, "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past." The American record on freedom is neither perfect nor dismal: like human nature, it contains elements of both.

...to expect a President Obama to be isolationist. The impulse to liberate others that they may enjoy liberty runes deep in the American soul.

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Inaugural Address (Calvin Coolidge, delivered 4 March 1925)

Realizing that we can not live unto ourselves alone, we have contributed of our resources and our counsel to the relief of the suffering and the settlement of the disputes among the European nations. Because of what America is and what America has done, a firmer courage, a higher hope, inspires the heart of all humanity.

These results have not occurred by mere chance. They have been secured by a constant and enlightened effort marked by many sacrifices and extending over many generations. We can not continue these brilliant successes in the future, unless we continue to learn from the past. It is necessary to keep the former experiences of our country both at home and abroad continually before us, if we are to have any science of government. If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations. We must realize that human nature is about the most constant thing in the universe and that the essentials of human relationship do not change. We must frequently take our bearings from these fixed stars of our political firmament if we expect to hold a true course. If we examine carefully what we have done, we can determine the more accurately what we can do.

We stand at the opening of the one hundred and fiftieth year since our national consciousness first asserted itself by unmistakable action with an array of force. The old sentiment of detached and dependent colonies disappeared in the new sentiment of a united and independent Nation. Men began to discard the narrow confines of a local charter for the broader opportunities of a national constitution. Under the eternal urge of freedom we became an independent Nation. A little less than 50 years later that freedom and independence were reasserted in the face of all the world, and guarded, supported, and secured by the Monroe doctrine. The narrow fringe of States along the Atlantic seaboard advanced its frontiers across the hills and plains of an intervening continent until it passed down the golden slope to the Pacific. We made freedom a birthright. We extended our domain over distant islands in order to safeguard our own interests and accepted the consequent obligation to bestow justice and liberty upon less favored peoples. In the defense of our own ideals and in the general cause of liberty we entered the Great War. When victory had been fully secured, we withdrew to our own shores unrecompensed save in the consciousness of duty done.

Throughout all these experiences we have enlarged our freedom, we have strengthened our independence. We have been, and propose to be, more and more American. We believe that we can best serve our own country and most successfully discharge our obligations to humanity by continuing to be openly and candidly, intensely and scrupulously, American. If we have any heritage, it has been that. If we have any destiny, we have found it in that direction.

But if we wish to continue to be distinctively American, we must continue to make that term comprehensive enough to embrace the legitimate desires of a civilized and enlightened people determined in all their relations to pursue a conscientious and religious life. We can not permit ourselves to be narrowed and dwarfed by slogans and phrases. It is not the adjective, but the substantive, which is of real importance. It is not the name of the action, but the result of the action, which is the chief concern. It will be well not to be too much disturbed by the thought of either isolation or entanglement of pacifists and militarists. The physical configuration of the earth has separated us from all of the Old World, but the common brotherhood of man, the highest law of all our being, has united us by inseparable bonds with all humanity.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 20, 2009 10:53 AM