America has Never Been Easy

In a little under six months, on July 4, the United States will celebrate its 250th anniversary, marking the day in 1776 when the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted the Declaration of Independence.

The year will feature events that range from the serious to circus-like.

Underpinning all of this should be an appreciation of the fragility of the nation’s founding.

One thought was constant as I watched “The American Revolution,” the six-part documentary on PBS by filmmaker Ken Burns and his collaborators: How close the colonies came to not attaining independence from Great Britain, how close they came to not becoming the United States of America.

The Revolutionary War was fraught with military missteps and political infighting, yet the colonists won enough battles and achieved sufficient agreement among themselves to forge a union, however shaky.

The United States has grown from the original 13 colonies to 50 states (and the District of Columbia), from 2.5 million people in 1776 to 343 million today.

And from each colony for itself to E Pluribus Unum, Latin for “Out of Many, One.”

If we succumb to hubris and the notion, sometimes true and other times not, of American exceptionalism, we risk taking for granted all that was required to create this nation and take for granted that its future is assured.

In the words of a fictional president in a film: “America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ‘cause it’s gonna put up a fight.”

Winston Churchill, speaking in the House of Commons on Nov. 11, 1947, in between his two stints as Britain’s prime minister, borrowed from others when he called democracy “the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

The Declaration of Independence speaks of truths that are held to be self-evident, about power deriving from the “consent of the governed,” and about “unalienable rights.”

In the Constitution of the United States, you read about a tripartite system of checks and balances, between the executive branch, legislative, and judicial branches of government.

There is concern in some quarters that not only are the legs of that three-legged stool uneven and wobbling, but that the stool itself is being kicked out from underneath the people it was designed to support.

From within the Jewish community, I hear that America is being irreparably harmed, that America is teetering on a precipice from which it could tumble easier than most people imagine.

From within the same Jewish community, I hear from people who survey the same political, economic, and social landscape, but reach a different conclusion and approve of what they see.

Each regards the other as either ignorant or willfully blind to the realities of the world around them. The discourse around these positions is often caustic.

The Declaration of Independence contained a bill of particulars, specific complaints against the rule of King George III of Great Britain and Ireland. Read that list and you may find language familiar to current debates and disputes.

Perhaps appropriately, 2026 — America’s semiquincentennial — is an election year.

One-third of the U.S. Senate and every seat in the House of Representatives will be voted on, as well as half of the governors and countless statewide and local offices. Though the office of president will not be on the mid-term ballot, the results will be viewed as a referendum on the current occupant of the White House.

Those who contend that the Constitution is being torn apart; that history is being rewritten, erased or ignored; that care for the stranger has given way to cruelty for cruelty’s sake; that might does not always make right; that the agencies of government created to protect the public have been degraded — they can seek redress by voting.

Those who consider these assertions baseless; who endorse a range of policies now in effect, domestically and globally; who rejoice that, after decades of perceived excess, “elites” are being brought to heel; who believe that “America First” should take precedence over remedying the world’s ills — they can demonstrate their support by voting.

“The American Revolution” documentary provided a valuable service, even for those who think themselves reasonably well schooled in the history of this country’s formation and birth.

Two hundred and 50 years ago, military missteps and political infighting came perilously close to rendering this experiment in self-governance a failure before it began.

America isn’t easy. It never has been. And it is not now.