All American Moment Of Serendipitous Patriotism

 

 

One fine summer day in Philadelphia I found myself walking east on Market Street in the company of friends and family toward Independence Hall.

 

The Liberty Bell was still in residence.

 

I remember aunts and uncles and cousins and roommates all hiking toward the July 4^th, 1976 Bicentennial speech given by President Ford.

 

President who, you ask?

 

Gerald Ford was the man selected by Nixon, who pardoned Nixon after Watergate, and served two years before losing the next presidential election to Jimmy Carter. The feeling then was that democrats could run anyone and win after Nixon, and they did.

 

But Ford was my guy, my President. Since I was in the army at the time, he was listed at the top of every military chain of command.

 

His luck in office included leading during the Bicentennial year. His speech that day echoes true today as it did then, but as a twenty one year old getting ready to start the next phase of life, and a bad sound system, I didn’t hear much of it live.

 

As a sixty three year old writer reading the speech Ford delivered that day, his words resonate in the current era.

 

President Ford knew his part in Washington, in his all-American moment, and played it well. No outsider coming in the remodel the political culture like an HGTV shaman taking out a wall to ‘open the room up’, Ford knew how to give and follow orders like the professional he was.

 

In the world of totem poles there was no doubt I was low man that day, a private first class medic on a day off, but I got to hear the top of the log give his talk for my own all American moment.

 

It was the most serendipitous feeling of American patriotism I’ve ever had, I’ll ever have.

 

In the U.S. Army.

In Philadelphia, the birthplace of liberty.

On 4 July 76.

At Independence Hall.

Listening to the President of the United States do it the way it’s supposed to be done.

 

What time and event has given you the biggest boost for for an American moment?

 

President Ford’s words on the Fourth:

 

It is fitting that we ask ourselves hard questions even on a glorious day like today. Are the institutions under which we live working the way they should? Are the foundations laid in 1776 and 1789 still strong enough and sound enough to resist the tremors of our times? Are our God-given rights secure, our hard-won liberties protected?

This President asked coherent questions regarding our overall good, America’s general direction.

The very fact that we can ask these questions, that we can freely examine and criticize our society, is cause for confidence itself. Many of the voices raised in doubt 200 years ago served to strengthen and improve the decisions finally made.

Cause for confidence or cause for celebration?

The American adventure is a continuing process. As one milestone is passed, another is sighted. As we achieve one goal — a longer lifespan, a literate population, a leadership in world affairs — we raise our sights.

This all but forgotten President believed in science and education and world leadership from the front to promote his American moment in the White House.

As we begin our third century, there is still so much to be done. We must increase the independence of the individual and the opportunity of all Americans to attain their full potential. We must ensure each citizen’s right to privacy. We must create a more beautiful America, making human works conform to the harmony of nature. We must develop a safer society, so ordered that happiness may be pursued without fear of crime or manmade hazards. We must build a more stable international order, politically, economically, and legally. We must match the great breakthroughs of the past century by improving health and conquering disease. We must continue to unlock the secrets of the universe beyond our planet as well as within ourselves. We must work to enrich the quality of American life at work, at play, and in our homes.

It is right that Americans are always improving. It is not only right, it is necessary. From need comes action, as it did here in Independence Hall. Those fierce political rivals — John Adams and Thomas Jefferson — in their later years carried out a warm correspondence. Both died on the Fourth of July of. 1826, having lived to see the handiwork of their finest hour endure a full 50 years.

They had seen the Declaration’s clear call for human liberty and equality arouse the hopes of all mankind. Jefferson wrote to Adams that “even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore life [light] and liberty to them.”

No Dark Ages for President Ford. The lights won’t go out during his American moment.

Over a century later, in 1936, Jefferson’s dire prophesy seemed about to come true. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking for a mighty nation, reinforced by millions and millions of immigrants who had joined the American adventure, was able to warn the new despotisms: “We too, born to freedom, and believing in freedom, are willing to fight to maintain freedom. We, and all others who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.”

The world knows where we stand. The world is ever conscious of what Americans are doing for better or for worse, because the United States today remains the most successful realization of humanity’s universal hope.

The world may or may not follow, but we lead because our whole history says we must. Liberty is for all men and women as a matter of equal and unalienable right. The establishment of justice and peace abroad will in large measure depend upon the peace and justice we create here in our own country, where we still show the way.

The American adventure began here with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence. It continues in a common conviction that the source of our blessings is a loving God, in whom we trust. Therefore, I ask all the members of the American family, our guests and friends, to join me now in a moment of silent prayer and meditation in gratitude for all that we have received and to ask continued safety and happiness for each of us and for the United States of America.

Thank you, and God bless you.

President Ford remained on message, in control, and offering calm and hope from the Republican side of history when both sides took an American moment to heart.