American ideal is still very real

This past week, as Americans celebrated Independence Day, and as Easton prepares to celebrate its own unique part in the birth of the United States through Heritage Day, I got to thinking a bit about what its all about.

No, this will not be yet another tedious yet politically correct column spewing patriotic platitudes here, though I love my country well. (I’ll even skip the jokes about fearing my government, at least for now.) But based on the current world situation, and perception of the U.S. and Americans around the world right now, I did get to thinking about the dichotomy between what the U.S. actually is and what average Americans perceive to be “American values.”

When it comes to Independence Day, and the birth of this nation in general, I consider myself to be somewhat more knowledgeable than the average person, since I have been involved in the reenactment of various events pertaining to the Revolutionary War for almost two decades now. My current editorship of The Easton News has curtailed my participation to near nothing in the past year and a half, but if you look closely at Heritage Day photos from the past ten years, you may just find my antique alter ego peering back at you, holding either a distaff or a linstock, demonstrating two very different aspects of colonial life in the local area.

But it doesn’t take any special study or historical expertise to realize that the America we live in today does not really resemble the America our forefathers lived in, or even exactly what they envisioned.

One can debate where or whether things have gone wrong in the intervening 200-plus years since the Declaration of Independence was written followed more than a decade later by the adoption of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, the three cornerstone documents that comprise the basis of the idea of the American way.

It’s plain to see that we, as a nation, have not always lived up to the ideals and laws we set for ourselves. It is immensely arguable that our government, particularly in its current incarnation, has been degraded from these ideals, to the detriment of both our economy and our reputation in the world.

But there can be an immense difference between a government and its people, as another lesson of history has told us time and again. Indeed, I believe there is an ever-growing gap between what the American people perceive to be the right course of action in a given situation and what seems to be happening in our government—perhaps as great as the gap that is growing between rich and poor in this country.

All is not lost, however. Though it would seem hopeless, consider that this country was founded on an outrageous idea, one that no one 200 hundred years ago thought could ever last. But last it has, and even thrived.

Recent scientific evidence confirms that information, the very stuff ideas are made of, does indeed have a physical component, though it is not completely understood entirely. That means that ideas are real, in a very physical sense.
It has always interested me that the first thing tyrants attack is ideas. One would think that once physical dominance is achieved, dictator types would feel secure, that ideas wouldn’t matter, only might.

But I think that those tyrants may have been ahead of contemporary science. They know that once an idea takes hold, it is very, very real in a physical sense.

That thought is comforting to me. See, even if our government has seemingly been usurped by folks that seem more likely to use the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution and Bill of Rights as toilet paper than to actually read the documents they’ve sworn to preserve, those ideals are embedded in the hearts and minds of nearly every American citizen.

See, if the idea of what the U.S. is and can be is intrinsically real, then the reality that idea represents is not so far away after all.

In other words, government by the people and for the people is the logical sum of the equation, not a privilege that is bestowed by some lofty power. Each and every one of us knows what America is really supposed to be about, even if those in the Oval Office seem clueless.

And that means that no matter what happens, our country’s best ideals will survive, no matter what happens. We just have to make sure that we, as a nation, live up to them.