Birth of a Republic…a Remembrance

Nations, like individuals, have birthdays. July 4, 1776 is the date on the birth certificate of America. Thomas Jefferson wrote and signed it.

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Revolutions change landscapes. They are not won by ideology but by blood. Without the shedding of blood there is no birth. So it was with the birth of America. The bloody war with England culminated in the advent of a Child of Liberty.

Lincoln harked back to the tenets of this nation’s birth when he wrote the Gettysburg Address. Excerpts follow:

“Four score and seven years ago our Fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

It continues: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

His rhetoric stirred the soul of this new nation, even as it stirs our collective soul today. National and world conflicts continue. Blood of our patriots continues to run red on our soil and on foreign shores. The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance. It comes at a terrible cost.

The concept of liberty pulsates in the hearts and minds of all people. These ideals of a personal liberty were eloquently penned in the birth certificate. It remains America’s most cherished symbol of liberty.

Forgive a crude analogy, but it could be inferred that America was immaculately conceived by the ethereal Concept of Liberty as its Father, and England as its Mother. Like children, maturity comes in ways both similar and different than their parents.

However, there remains always an atavistic and familial resemblance to both parents. This child, America, embodies similitudes of both ‘father’ and ‘mother’ in its struggle to mature. As we wonder what our own children’s legacy will be, so do we collectively wonder the same of our Republic.

There’s a story about Alexander Graham Bell. He and a friend observed a hot air balloon breaking the gravitational pull of the earth in France. It rose slowly, attained a significant height and drifted over a tree hedge. It plunged in a field where peasants worked. In panic they attacked the balloon with pitch forks. Change often evokes such responses.

The friend asked, “Now, what good was this experiment? It ended in failure.”

Dr. Bell replied, “What good is any newborn baby?” So it is with America. It continues to mature.

J. G. Magee, an American aviator and poet, wrote these stirring words:

“I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, and danced with the sky on laughter and silver wings.…”

America, The Child of Liberty, has transcended Magee’s inspiring words. It is now soaring into full maturity.

How can we define our Republic today? Descriptions differ. Some depict it as a nation of junkies, drunk on oil from frozen tundra of North Dakota to the vines of Sodom in the fields of Gomorrah. Others claim its culture is one of excessive commercialism, the aphrodisiac of entitlement.

Some suggest the pervading pursuit of wealth turns us into herds of demon-possessed swine, rushing headlong en masse over the abyss of debt. Others lament the loss of jobs, trade treaties, and the hangover hegemony of Colonialism inherited from our ‘mother’s’ side of the family. No one fails to mention the insidious cycle of poverty and a perpetual welfare underclass. Oh, so many voices.

Others remind us of the technological genius that has broken down the walls of status quo and created new systems of scientific and economic paradigms. Still others see America exporting ideals of freedom to enslaved peoples of this world. America is constantly birthing yet more Children of Liberty.

Lincoln at Gettysburg looked beyond the carnage of a bloody Civil War and envisioned the future of America in a larger context. With words he sought to galvanize our disparate liberties into a more cohesive and nationalized whole. He wrote:

“…(T)hat this nation, under God, 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.” Can any words inspire more than these?

Of a truth, no nation on this earth has successfully existed into perpetuity. Perhaps it’s just a dream. But, dear Children of Freedom, living “under God” is a legacy of freedom to future generations. It is a dream worth dreaming.

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Tennyson wrote these words in his poem, In Memoriam:

“…(T)hat men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things.”

Are there more profound words than these to remind us of our glorious heritage?

Happy Birthday, America.




Bud Hearn
July 3, 2015