I’m a bonafide cornball. I cry at weddings and when I hear truly beautiful music. I get goosebumps standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial or driving along Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. I am humbled with every visit to Arlington National Cemetery. I’m one of those people who likes to travel to other lands but feels a sense of relief when I am back on American soil. I love the United States with every fiber of my being in spite of its flaws because I believe that it is one of the few places on earth where a nobody like me has the opportunity and the freedom to speak my mind and to live better than kings once did. Whenever I hear the Star Spangled Banner being sung by a crowd of fellow citizens I am moved to the very fiber of my soul. 

Our country was founded on the hopes and dreams of brave individuals who saw fit to rebel against what was then the most powerful government in the world. Their declaration of independence from what they viewed as a despotic government was a treasonous act and those who signed the document that launched a new vision of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness risked death by hanging.

They gathered one hundred thirty nine years ago in a small room in Philadelphia on a swelteringly hot July day to affix their signature to a document written by a Virginia farmer. They had quibbled over the wording and the intent of the new nation that they dreamed of establishing but in terms of the overriding ideas they were of a mind. They based their decree on what they had learned from the writings of philosophers who spoke of enlightened ways of governing. In many ways they might have been criticized as being naive and utopian in thinking that it was possible for ordinary men to share the power of decision making that had for so long been the exclusive domain of kings and potentates. Still they were convinced that they were on the right side of history and so they risked everything to light a torch of freedom that would ultimately lead to a new nation unlike any that the world had ever before seen.

Their thinking was radical but imperfect. They seemed to have understood that going too far would unravel their hopes and dreams before they even took hold. They had long fought the tyranny of their mother country and they argued among themselves as well. In the end they had to compromise to bring their varied beliefs to fruition. In those beginning moments of one of the grandest experiments the freedoms that they proposed did not extend to women or to those who were enslaved, a decision that would come back to haunt their new nation time and time again. Their proposals reflected both the thinking of the time and their own humanity. Each of them were great men with feet of clay.

It is easy for us to criticize our Founding Fathers from the distance of time. We see things that they did wrong and wonder at their ignorance of the values that seem so clear to us now. We often forget that their worldview was by definition vastly different from ours. We have the luxury of progress and time to foster more liberal thinking than they possessed. We are able to see the error of their ways from a perspective of knowing exactly how things were going to turn out. They, on the other hand, had no idea if what they were doing would even work. In being part of that group they endangered themselves and their families. Had not events unfolded in their favor they might have simply been footnotes in the history of Great Britain, branded as foolish traitors to God and King for all time.

Of course we know that they somehow ultimately overcame a powerful army of well trained soldiers and generals. They gained the independence that they so dearly desired and founded a fledgling nation that few thought would exist for very long. They crafted a Constitution that in its brilliance allowed room for the basic principals that they so desired to evolve as needed. They were visionary in understanding that to fight the possibility of despotism the power and authority must be shared and protected by a system of checks and balances. They realized that the authority must always ultimately lie with the people, not the leaders, and so they protected what they believed to be the innate rights of the citizens in the first ten amendments to their original constitution.

Finding the balance between a strong federal government and the autonomy of the many states has been a struggle for as long as the country has existed. The Founding Fathers fought among themselves as to how to best to distribute the power so that no one entity would one day rule over the others. They were quite brilliant in setting up a system that sometimes feels divisive, slow, and cumbersome. In our present world of rapid change and even faster receipt of information we sometimes grumble that our government seems to be broken because of the many disagreements that we have. The reality is that it is working just the way it was designed. Our brilliant founders understood all too well the nature of mankind to become corrupted if given too much power. Even as those in their group had once argued with one another, so too did they want the debates to continue. Ultimately it is in compromising among the different opinions that our progress has been made over the course of the last two hundred plus years.

I suspect that our Founding Fathers would be both confounded and elated by the outcomes of the country that they produced. We have taken their ideas and continued to forge a nation of the people and for the people. We’ve had to fight among ourselves to get things right time and again but the very structures that those brave souls created so long ago have worked to correct the failings of our government. Ours is and always should be a forward thinking country. If we look back in time it should be less to criticize and judge than to celebrate the men who had an idea that would literally change the way the world works today. Were it not for their courage who knows what our present situation might be.

We’ve had a long weekend to contemplate who we are as a nation and I believe with all of my heart that we are still traveling along the right path. We are brothers and sisters who sometimes fight with one another but always find a way to make peace. Ultimately this is our country and we should be proud when we gaze across the landscape and see the diversity of population, the shared wealth, the massive opportunities, and the freedoms that define us. This is a time to be thankful for what we have and to be determined to work to perfect the nation that has given so much hope to so many over the decades that have passed since that July so long ago.

As my family was dining at Gringo’s the other day I could not help but notice the many ethnicities represented in that one small place. All of us were laughing and talking and secure in the knowledge that we were truly free to enjoy a moment of revelry. The truth is that in spite of having a few evil people in our midst, the majority of Americans are good and loving. We may not all think the same but that is the surest sign that the grand experiment of this nation is still working as it should. It is in our differences that the miracle of the United States of America demonstrates its beauty. I thank God everyday that I was somehow lucky enough to have been born in this remarkable place. God bless America and its people!