Citizen Alert: What is America, Where is it, and How shall it Live?
Since Socrates first asked, some 2,500 years ago, the searching question, “how shall I live?,” philosophers and others exploring the great ethical choices we humans must make across the years, those advocating self-awareness have encouraged consideration of our values and beliefs to determine the essential, defining answers to profound questions including “who am I” and, more broadly, “where am I,” those that keep college coffee shops open into the wee hours of the morning as students engage in deep dive conversations that begin to shape their lives.
These wonderfully absorbing questions, contemplated, initially, by over-caffeinated, agile young minds, but certainly worthy of life-long exploration, are also ones that the citizenry should be asking of America. Because the premise and promise of republican self-governance, beautifully summed up in Thomas Paine’s history-making pamphlet, “Common Sense,” in a memorable phrase, “We have the power to begin the world over again,” We the People should ask, similarly, “what is America,” “where is America,” and “how shall America live?”
The power of citizenship– the right of citizenship– is an invitation, indeed, to state it more strongly, the duty, to raise these defining questions about our nation, knowing that the right answers about the nature, state and future of America, must involve a democratically engaged citizenry eager to preserve that which is worth preserving about America, taking stock of where America stands at this juncture in our nation’s history—its strengths and weaknesses, merits and demerits—and asking the most nation-defining question, how shall America live?
These are questions, questions for all seasons, central to Benjamin Franklin’s declaration that delegates to the Constitutional Convention had given us “a republic” if we the people “can keep it.” Let us briefly consider these categories of questions, with full acknowledgment that this effort is but a sketch in an evolving sketchbook.
To ask, what is America? is to examine the core beliefs and values of our nation, beginning with our foundational documents– the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence set forth the majestic principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and trumpeted the doctrines of natural rights and popular sovereignty. These values defined America at the beginning. They stated to the world who we are, what we stand for and, as Lincoln explained, what we aspire to become. In important ways, the Constitution, over time, has fulfilled some of the premises, that is, the aspirations, of the Declaration and, through various mechanisms such as voting rights and inclusion of women, Black Americans and Native Americans, embodied the values, beliefs and principles that have made America more democratic that it was at the beginning.
The fact that America has evolved since the founding period invites consideration and scrutiny of the question, where is America, now? This solemn question invites reflection on the state of our union and must address matters such as compliance with constitutional commands and limitations, the health of the doctrines of separation of powers and checks and balances, the rule of law and judicial independence. An appraisal of the nation requires candid consideration of the relative success and failure of policies, laws, programs and practices that govern the lives of Americans. Critical examination must encompass evaluation of our elected representatives, including their motivations, ambitions, virtues and integrity, as well as an exercise in measuring their devotion to their constituents and, perhaps, their self-serving behavior. This honest, to-the-bone assessment of the nation includes policies, foreign and domestic. Create an extensive scorecard and examine and grade such policies as tariffs, trade agreements and war-making, and those that affect affordability, energy and food prices, as well as health care. Does America seem committed to the grand principles of the Declaration of Independence? Are we a nation the lives up to the principle of equal justice for all or do we have a two-tiered justice system, one for ordinary citizens and another for the rich and powerful? In the end, the question of how America should live invites consideration of the question of the values, beliefs and principles that should govern the life of the nation. The 250th anniversary of the founding of our country represents an opportunity for an ongoing conversation of what America stands for, at home and abroad. Fundamentally, let’s ask ourselves if we continue to believe in government of, by and for the people?