James March-April 2024 online - Flipbook - Page 52
We can no longer assume that Americans understand their nation and how
our political system works. We must be
deliberate about reminding them.
In 1976, a deeply divided America was emerging from over two
decades of turbulence and trauma
caused by an unpopular and costly
foreign war, a civil rights movement
that radically changed centuries-old
race relations, a revolution in sexual
mores, multiple political assassinations and an unprecedented Constitutional crisis that resulted in the
first presidential resignation. The
country had been plagued by widespread social upheaval, civil unrest
and violence unlike anything the nation had seen since the bloody Civil
War a century earlier.
At that moment of multiple crises,
an exhausted America turned momentarily from its problems and focused
on its 200th birthday. The commemoration helped to heal the nation and
reminded us of our unique role in the
history of humankind’s long, difficult
struggle for freedom. Of all the accomplishments of the Bicentennial,
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the most important was helping us to
remember who we are as Americans.
We can do that again. Today’s
challenges are not only different but
even more dangerous in their longterm consequences. Today’s divisions
run along different fault lines than 50
years ago. Some of our leaders seem
uninterested in forging compromise
or finding common ground. In many
ways the current definition of American political leadership itself has no
precedent in our national experience
or traditions. The selfless custom
established by George Washington
in 1783 when he willingly gave up
power by returning his commission to
Congress seems not only quaint but
strangely out of place in 2024.
That doesn’t mean we can’t find
our way out of the wilderness. We can
use the upcoming Semi-quincentennial to heal and remember, and allow
“the better angels of our nature,” as
Abraham Lincoln once said, to reassert themselves. It will take patience,
humility and compromise. It will take
the kind of extraordinary leadership
that America is known for around the
globe. And it will take realizing that
the alternative— lawlessness, violence,
chaos and potential dictatorship— is
far worse than anything imaginable in
a democratic society.
The Georgia Historical Society
is here to help restore trust in our
institutions and to remind Americans
of the example that our country has
set for the world over. The moral
authority of America— what Lincoln
called “the last, best hope of earth”—
has been more powerful than all our
vaunted economic strength and military might combined.
In so doing, we can help our country move confidently into the future
with a renewed understanding of, and
commitment to, the lofty and timeless values and ideals that unite us as
Americans— values and ideals that are
elastic enough to meet new challenges
and are greater than any of the things
that divide us.
Happy birthday America. Here’s to
the next 250 years of the Republic!
Dr. W. Todd Groce is president and CEO of the
Georgia Historical Society.
