Nation is a Verb

Bald Eagle photo by Mike Lockart 

As we reflect on this sunny Independence Day morning, we realize this country is amazing. Nowhere else on our planet do people enjoy the freedoms (and lifestyle), we do. We have the freedom to participate in the creation of our reality.

 Our system was conceived by deeply spiritual men, who though like all of us had flaws, devoted their lives to creating a nation where the dignity of humankind would be preeminent. People like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and others thought deeply about morality and virtue and the responsibility and privileges of freedom and how these must be cultivated and understood in order to lead a meaningful life.

 We have revolutionary (at the time and still today), founding documents that state: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion”, ( preventing the government from forcing one religion on us), and also state “or prevents the free exercise thereof”  (preventing government from restricting our right to religious expression).

 We have elected officials who are public servants—they are explicitly elected not to rule us but to serve us!

 We have a system of checks and balances built to prevent monarchs, or those who would like to rule us as monarchs, from taking away our individual freedoms.

 We are the most charitable nation on earth—billions of our tax dollars have been spent by our elected officials to help people hit by famine, flood, earthquakes, and war in nations around the world and right here at home. But even more amazing is that as individuals, Americans give more charity both proportionately and in actual dollar amounts per capita than any other citizenry on earth.

 We are, most important, a nation of individuals and this is the preeminent idea one comes away with from reading the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This country’s model is dedicated to protecting the rights, freedoms and privileges of the individual and that is what makes the founders vision so compassionate and farsighted. The individual has precedence, not the politicians, not the government, and not the country.

 Perhaps it isn’t fashionable to study the writings of the founders but if you do, you’ll probably be struck by how sincere, thoughtful, ethical, and frankly, incredibly brilliant their words are. They also seem surprisingly modern in content, if not in style.

 Though doers and intellectuals, the founders were not prophets and could not have foretold where we’d be today, poised on the cusp of seismic shifts as our country grows, shrinks, falls, rises, rolls, rocks, leans, heaves, and occasionally soars towards the future. We are a nation, yes. But perhaps nation is also a verb. We continue to nation.