The Journey Right: Love of Country
“But what we have is still fragile. Not because America is inherently racist. It is absolutely not. But because our values can’t be taken for granted. They won’t teach themselves to new generation of Americans. If we don’t defend them, if we don’t cherish them and recognize them as the source of our progress, we will lose them.” — Nikki Haley
I love my country. I believe the United States is the greatest country in the world and is a net good for the world and for humanity. I believe in the people and hope and dreams our country embodies. It’s probably not a popular position… actually it’s in the minority. On my journey right, love for country is perhaps the most telling characteristic distinguishing those on the left and right. In 2019, Gallup polled a number of US adults about “American Pride” and found that only 45% of US adults are extremely proud to be American. When broken down along party affiliation, 66% of Republicans were very proud, whereas 76% of Democrats were least proud. Along political ideology, 54% of conservatives were very proud where 49% of liberals were least proud. In my opinion, this contrast can be traced to the racial tensions in 2014–2016 which was then reached new heights when President Trump was elected. But I believe the root of this divide is the fundamental belief of America’s founding and the lack of knowledge on American history.
A survey conducted by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation found that, “the average American to be woefully uninformed regarding America’s history and incapable of passing the U.S Citizenship Test.” To pass the test, one needs to a score of 60. I actually took the practice test… and passed with a 95%. But my score would put me in the minority of Americans. The survey the found that only 36% of Americans could pass a multiple choice test consisting of items from the US Citizenship Test. This lack of knowledge ties to the quote I shared by Nikki Haley. As a result, the values that lie at the heart of the American founding have slowly been lost while widespread acceptance that America was founded on slavery has become the new norm. This is simply not true.
America was founded on the fundamental belief that “That all men were created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Those beliefs were enshrined in the longest lasting national constitution signed by the Founding Fathers in 1787, some 229 years ago. While it is true that America has a haunting and conflicting history of slavery, the Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone from which efforts to dismantle slavery would be built on.This dichotomy and apparent hypocrisy keeps the door open for criticism and efforts to reframe history.
One quote, often cited by friends and perhaps most notably by Colin Kaepernick to dump on America, is from Fredrick Douglas’ 1852 speech — “The Meaning of July Fourth for a Negro.” In this quote Douglas says-
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim… There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”
These are scathing remarks. Yet contrary to the belief that Douglas’ statement is dismissive of America and its founding, he is not. Douglas describes the Declaration of Independence as “the ringbolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny… The principles contained in that instruments are saving principles.” In the fullness of Douglas’ speech, he is calling America out for its failure to live out its founding values, for becoming complacent with slavery and resting on the laurels of the Founding Fathers. Douglas actually urges America to fulfill its founding principles as those principles had yet to be extended to African Americans. It is a similar call that Martin Luther King Jr. would make in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial when he spoke the words, “I say to you today, my friends, though, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”.
On claim that the Constitution enshrines slavery Fredrick Douglas retorts, “The Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them… If the Constitution were intended to be, by its Framers and adopters, a slaveholding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding nor slave can be found”. He goes on to say, “Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand, it will be found to contain principles and purposed, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.” Yet rather than recall these principles, we have thrown them aside, accepted the false premise that America was founded on slavery and sown the bitter seeds of social justice.
Along with the founding, the Founding Fathers are often vilified and their conflicting reality used as a tool to further forward the false premise of America’s birth. While there no denying the reality that some of the Framers were slave owners, it is also true they were conflicted men and men of their time. Douglas also acknowledges the conflict by stating, “The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.” Too often, we hear about the failures of the Founders, not the actions they took to enshrine these principles.
In his first draft of the Declaration, Jefferson wrote regarding the King of England,
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this exorable commerce; and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them and murdering the people upon whom he has obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”
Unfortunately the Continental Congress removed this passage due to pressure from the South but in this statement lie a few note worthy things. The first is the acknowledgement of individual rights, whether free and enslaved. This set in motion the move towards abolishing slavery. In this passage, Jefferson also acknowledges the dilemma the Framers were facing — that slavery would be the dividing issue and would be the point of exploitation by the English, risking the fragile unity of the colonies. Not only was Jefferson correct in this, he would also foreshadow the continued cancer slavery would be on America.
The Framers have also received unfair generalizations and their legacies summarized into remarks to score political points. Of the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, the architect of the Declaration of Independence, always seems to be the favorite punching bag. He was, after all, a slave owner and had an affair with Sally Hemming, who was a slave, fathering six children with her. Despite his flaws Jefferson continued to seek the end of slavery after writing the Declaration of Independence. In the draft of Virginia’s state constitution in 1776, Jefferson include a clause prohibiting the future importation of slaves. In 1783 Jefferson proposed the gradual emancipation of slaves in the Virginia constitution. In 1784, Jefferson proposed a law making slavery illegal in all western territories at the time. As President, he urged Congress to add on to the ban of the slave trade. Thomas Sowell writes in his book, “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” that, “Moral principles may be timeless but moral choices can be made only among the options actually available at particular times and places.” These men, as imperfect as they were, were bound to the real life consequences of their time.
America is not perfect, but I love this country. I love what it stands for. It still is a beacon of light in the world and still embodies hope. In a time where politics is at the endlessly flooding everyone’s social media feeds, the tension of an ideological battle swelling to new heights, and politicians wanting to “fundamentally change America”, we need to stop and ask what that actually means. What are the ideas and principles these leaders propose we replace the Constitution with? It is imperative that we remember these founding principles and re-anchor ourselves to the ringbolt of our country’s founding.
“I have said the Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt of to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.” — Fredrick Douglas
