Thoughts on the eve of Constitution Day

constitution_quill_penIf you’ve visited the National Archives and seen our Charters of Freedom first hand, you can’t help being moved by the experience.  Being inches from the physical representations of the ideas that became America is one of the many, many privileges those of us who live and work in and around Washington, D.C. can, and often do, take advantage of.

I visited the Archives today, on a whim.  I had wrapped up a business meeting over lunch, and had spent much of the morning watching the news and glued to Twitter.  Having spent the last decade working in the maritime industry, with many men and women both civilian and military who worked at the Navy Yard – and with my sister living within walking distance – the tragedy there hit close to home.

As I walked into the Archives, I remembered that tomorrow, September 17th, is Constitution Day.  A few hours from now we’ll be celebrating the 226th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution at the Convention in Philadelphia.  What Peter was to the Church, the Constitution is to America: the rock upon which our laws and our nation is built.  And time has proven, again and again, that the worst the world can throw at us has not prevailed against it.

While the world has radically changed in the 226 years since its signing, our Constitution has endured.  It has survived good times and bad, countless wars, economic upheaval, societal evolution and revolution, great leaders, awful ones, men who sought to use the law to degrade and abuse other men, and those who would use the law to free them.  Yet throughout those years, the fundamental ideas that are woven throughout the fabric of our Charters of Freedom – concepts like liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez faire – have survived, and our nation has thrived.

Those five concepts were the words that Seymour Martin Lipset used to define what we have come to call “American Exceptionalism.”  That concept itself came from the pen of Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, who wrote “[t]he position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no other democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.”  He was right.

I am a firm believer in American Exceptionalism.  Many, from Vladimir Putin to others closer to home, misunderstand the concept and I find that unfortunate.  Unfortunate because when one looks at America and our history, our system of laws, and the society we have nurtured and sustained, it’s hard to argue that we are anything but exceptional.  We a unique nation – one that cannot be found anywhere else in human history.  And that’s true whether Pooty Poot or any of his ministers are willing to admit it.

America is unique in the pantheon of nations for a variety of reasons.  Premiere among those is one of the basic concepts we hold collectively, as a people:  we are a nation founded on an idea.  That idea was listed in our Declaration of Independence as one of the self-evident truths – that governments are constituted among men to protect rights, and that legitimate governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed.  The idea that the masses, in whatever form, could choose their own leaders and that those leaders could effectively govern was a revolutionary thought in 1787.  It was the kind of statement about law that philosophers were fond of, but one that was almost extinct in actual practice, having died alongside the Roman Republic in Augustus’ time.

Time has proven that the revolutionary generation’s belief in the self-evident truth of self-government was not misplaced. Our Constitution, both a document written in the midst of turmoil and the product of compromise struck by a small group of intelligent, educated – but not superhuman – men and the process whereby it was ratified and came into force, is a testament to the power of those beliefs.  And while the document has changed – whether through amendment or through its interpretation by the courts – we still cherish the Constitution as the tie that binds all Americans to each other, both in the present and the past.

It was this shared fealty to our founding ideas that made America.  America exists not because we all share a language or an ethnicity.  We weren’t a province of Rome, or part of Charlemagne’s Empire.  We haven’t always lived here, and we don’t share a single religion.  In short, all of the old ways of forming a nation-state didn’t and don’t apply to us.  We remain, to this day, a nation built on an idea.  That is what is so exceptional about us.

Where some critics err is by equating exceptional with perfect.  This country isn’t perfect and never has been.  We are a nation of laws, and laws are written by human beings.  Men and women are fallible, we make mistakes, we act impulsively and with poor judgment and those characteristics inevitably exist in the things we create.  Government is, of course, one of them.  But even with our mistakes – some, like slavery, unforgivable – America remains symbolic of the potential for opportunity and justice that representative democracy has made possible for so many people around the world.

That imperfection was clear today, as we reeled from yet another tragedy.  While we still don’t know if this was the act of one man, a random act of gun violence or something more sinister, we do know that this wasn’t the first or the last time that Americans have been confronted with violence here at home.  In a perfect America – in a perfect world – no one would leave their family in the morning and not come home safe and sound.  But we all know that world does not exist, at least not down here on planet Earth.

Yet no matter how many days like today we face, no matter how many wars, how many 9/11s, how many senseless acts of violence, America will endure.  We will remain exceptional, a nation built on ideas, where ideas like liberty, equality and individualism retain their power, and where we constantly question ourselves, where we constantly strive, to create that more perfect union Madison and the framers envisioned.

That’s why I never let my cynicism, my doubt, my anger and frustration at all that I see going wrong overwhelm my recognition of all that is going right.  I could not help but feel a sense of optimism – maybe it was irrational, maybe not – when I looked at the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights today.  Even as my mind grappled with the tragedy a scant few miles from where I stood, I felt strongly that everything was going to be okay and we would work through these difficulties like we always had.  Even hundreds of years later, the ideas enshrined on those parchments, no matter how faded the ink may be, are still powerful enough to wipe away tragedy and inspire hope for the future.

It is my fervent hope that we all can enjoy a safe, peaceful and thought provoking Constitution Day tomorrow.  And if you’re near D.C., drop by the Archives.

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