To start with, we need to restore a climate of truth by clearing the air of misinformation and changing how we report, consume, and share news so we aren’t living in different realities. We must also re-learn the art of “agreeing to disagree” with people whose political views we don’t share, rather than alienating them. If we escape our echo chambers it will make it easier to cooperate on issues large and small. It’s likewise important for us to begin re-associating in person. Our proclivity to participate in voluntary organizations was long a defining aspect of the American story, and we’ve been called a “nation of joiners,” a trait that has allowed us to develop a democratic culture unlike any other. Sadly, our growing interconnectedness online is making us disconnected from one another, so we must find new ways to engage.
Additionally, it’s time to bring the focus of politics closer to home. Our problems won’t be solved with one-size-fits-all DC fixes. Washington is slow and cumbersome, and we don’t have to wait for it to act. We can have a faster and deeper impact on the issues we care about—health care, crime, or drug use—by acting within our communities today. At the same time, it’s incumbent upon us to focus on educating the next generation about their democracy.
I will never forget one of my first US history classes. My teacher was a veteran who had fought in the war, had scars to show for it, and ran a tight ship in the classroom. One day I got in trouble for interrupting another student. “Damn it,” my teacher said, silencing the classroom. “Apologize now—now.” I apologized to my fellow student, but the teacher told me I also owed an apology to Thomas Paine, the American revolutionary whose writings we were studying. That and much more, he said. “Uh, what else do I owe him, sir?” I added, probably to a few chuckles. He stared me straight in the eyes and said two words I will never forget: “Your life.”
Our job as citizens is two-fold. We need to preserve the republic for ourselves and get ready to pass it along. It won’t be in our custody forever. There’s a US senator in Washington fond of the saying: “When you’re going down a dirt road and see a turtle atop a fence post, chances are that turtle didn’t get there by itself.” Our country has been saved, time and time again, by the generations that picked us up before we could get run over. Now it’s our turn to do the same for the next generation. We need to get serious about preparing our children for the biggest job title they’ll ever have—citizen. It’s no exaggeration to suggest, as my teacher once did, that our very lives depend on it.
America’s past is its lodestar. Every lesson we need for renewing our country is there, waiting to be rediscovered. The shared values around which it was founded are the true north that united the states and to which we must return to preserve our future. The survival of our democracy is not inevitable. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He may be right, but it doesn’t bend itself. History doesn’t make us. We make history. Its course is changed by the people themselves who, with their values as a sextant, navigate daily moral quandaries. The choices we make define our direction and who we are. Right now we face two momentous ones. The first: Is a man fit or unfit to be president? And the second: Are we worthy or unworthy of the blessings of liberty? One will be decided by ballot and the other by our behaviors in the weeks, months, and years to come. I hope you will debate the answers beyond these pages.
If we look within ourselves and undertake the arduous task of moral repair, America can restore the soul of its political system. We can once again illuminate a pathway for others onto the vaunted plazas of open society. If, however, we shrink from the task, our names will be recorded by history as those who didn’t pass the torch but let its light expire. That is my warning. Every American generation before us faced and passed this test. Our charge is to do the same, proving that the United States can do what other civilizations could not—survive the ages—and bend the arc of the moral universe toward the value that is the real sinew of civic life: freedom.
Let’s roll.
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ISBNs: 978-1-5387-1846-9 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-1847-6 (ebook)
E3-20191022-NF-ORI