A quarter of a millennium is a long enough period to make a nation seem eternal, as if it has always existed and will continue to exist forever. However, the founding fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence knew they were making a bet, not offering a guarantee. They put their lives, fortunes, and honor on the line precisely because the outcome was uncertain. Two and a half centuries later, this bet is taken up by each generation that inherits it. This is the truth worth celebrating this summer: America is still in the process of being made.
All this should not overshadow the success of this bet. Over two and a half centuries, the experiment of self-governance has transformed strangers into American citizens, provided safety and comfort to people, and entrusted power to ordinary citizens – men and women alike – to a greater extent than any nation before it.
The American example has inspired people everywhere, far beyond the country's borders, to demand the same. In its finest moments, this country has been an ally of the cause of human freedom. The record is not flawless, but an objective analysis reveals a nation that, more often than not, has directed its immense power towards good, as stated in an article by The New York Times editorial board.
Americans may be tempted to view the founding moment of the country either as a perfect act of genius or as an unforgivable original sin. It was neither. It was a revolutionary moral claim made by imperfect people who did not fully live up to it.
The statement "all men are created equal" was written by a man who held others in slavery; promise and betrayal were intertwined in the same sentence. Nevertheless, once laid down on paper, the promise could not be revoked.
This fundamental promise was followed by three others: the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, reminds the American newspaper.
The "if" every generation of Americans must answer
The nation's first disputes largely concerned who would be recognized as having the right to life and liberty. More recent debates often focus on the pursuit of happiness. They address the rules of the game: not who is admitted to the community, but what this community owes its members and what we all owe to those who are not yet born. It is about whether a free people, through self-government, can build a society where each individual has a real chance to fulfill themselves.
Benjamin Franklin described the founding moment of the American nation with a phrase so well-known that many Americans today can quote it. Asked what kind of government the founding fathers had created, it is said he would have replied: "A republic, if you can keep it." The conditional part of that statement – that "if" – presents a new challenge for each generation and is currently the task facing today's Americans, the authors emphasize.
In the decades to come, this task will likely boil down to a few fundamental questions whose answers are truly uncertain.
The first question is whether self-governing people still share a common reality.
Democracy is based on something we rarely observe - an approximate agreement on what is true and what has happened. This ground is cracking as trust in institutions that once established facts erodes, and artificial intelligence can fabricate convincing lies in seconds. A nation that cannot agree on what is real cannot deliberate. It can only divide into camps. When people retreat into tribal enclaves, this can fuel a sense of righteousness and victimization.
The second question is whether Americans can still stand to lose.
Self-governance is, in part, a system of managing disagreements without bloodshed, and its indispensable habit is the willingness of the defeated to accept defeat, to relinquish power, and to live to fight another day. This habit demands something difficult: valuing the rules of competition more than the outcome we desired, writes the NYT editorial board.
Today, Americans increasingly view their neighbors across the political divide not as fellow citizens with whom they disagree, but as enemies to be defeated. A politics organized around enmity and catastrophizing has little need for patient and charmless compromises and for admitting that the other side might argue in good faith. The question is whether Americans can regain the conviction that a properly calculated loss is not a disaster, but the price of a system worth preserving.
The third question concerns the country's ability to honor its fundamental material promise: that people who work can prosper, and their children can go even further.
Current levels of inequality are almost unprecedented, and living standards for large segments of American society have stagnated in recent years. However, the country's promise has never been solely about economic outcomes; it has also been about equity and who has the chance to build a better life. From this perspective, the balance of the last 50 years is bleak, the article states.
The fourth question is the oldest, now appearing in a new form: can the most pluralistic nation in history remain one people?
No other country has attempted what America is trying: to unite people of all origins, beliefs, and languages in a civic community based on adherence to a set of ideas, rather than blood or land ties.
Previous generations have heroically expanded the definition of the phrase "we, the people":
- the abolitionist who invoked the Declaration of Independence in front of a slave owner;
- the suffragist facing men who denied her the right to vote;
- the participant in the Selma march facing law enforcement waiting at the end of the bridge;
- the owner of the gay bar at the Stonewall Inn facing descending police.
The fifth question concerns the future: are Americans capable of overcoming trials that unfold slowly but demand sacrifices even now?
Dangerous climate change is one of these trials. Another involves the debts left to people who never voted for them.
History shows how resilient America is
America has answered questions of such magnitude – and even greater – in the past, so people should not lose hope that they will be able to do so again. The New York Times lists some instructive examples:
- The country did not collapse even when it divided and buried over 750,000 of its citizens.
- It did not yield during the breadlines of the Great Depression, in the existential war against fascism that followed, or in the smoke of the cities in flames in the '60s.
- The country did not fail during the Cold War, when a rival nation (Russia) vowed to bury it.
Each time, the American Republic proved more resilient than those who lamented its fate had predicted – not due to any magic of the system, but because a sufficient number of people decided that the alternative was unacceptable and got to work.
Democracy is not a safe haven where we simply live; it is a skill we must practice – otherwise we will lose it, emphasize American journalists.
They conclude by stating that they hope this anniversary will be an occasion for Americans to remember that the right to self-governance comes with the obligation to do it well: to be present, to listen, to speak the truth, and to treat each other with the basic decency that citizenship implies.
The next 50 years are not a predetermined prophecy, but a new bet we must make. The founding fathers left us a promise they could not fulfill on their own. Neither can we do it alone. But we can answer their questions a little better than our predecessors did, we can keep the Republic in a slightly better state than we found it, and we can pass it on. This is the American project, and it is enough, concludes the leadership of The New York Times.
T.D.