What My Grandfather Taught Me About America
My appreciation for the greatness of America’s founding was first instilled in me by my grandfather, Antonio Gimenez. Born in Puerto Rico in the early 1920s, he and seven of his brothers are combat veterans from WWII, along with two more brothers who (to their dismay) were ineligible for combat but served the Army in in non-combat roles, and two sisters who served in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). Twelve in all! My grandfather landed at Normandy on D-Day, fought in many of the major battles in Europe, and even met my grandmother in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. He never likes to talk about the war, but his patriotism is irrepressible.
He never forgot what he was fighting for, and revered the founders for their vision of a society dedicated to liberty. His favorite anecdote about America’s greatness was how anyone, any single individual, who had been wronged by the government had the right – guaranteed by law – to stand up for himself and challenge the government. This is the complete polar opposite of the fascism he fought against, a system where the individual is nothing and completely expendable to the interests of the state.
This is the true spirit of the American Revolution. What made the colonists revolt against the British crown was not so much the taxes but the fact that laws were being imposed without the consent of the governed, and that peaceful attempts to redress grievances were met with military occupation.
In 1780, with the war still ongoing, the people of Massachusetts were asked to ratify a state constitution. They refused every draft until one was constructed that recognized the sovereignty of the individual and derived authority from the consent of the governed. It was there that the term “We the people” originated. And the best method of securing and ensuring individual liberty was the central issue in the ratification debates of the constitution. (For more, see Ratification: The people debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 by Pauline Maier)
This individuality and the way it pervades everyday life was the central, shocking discovery of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.
The other key to our founding is the principals of Judeo-Christian values, and – unless you are a leftist intent on distorting the words of Thomas Jefferson’s Danbury Letter – it is impossible to miss this:
Benjamin Rush: “I proceed…to enquire what mode of education we shall adopt so as to secure to the state all the advantages that are to be derived from the proper instruction of youth; and here I beg leave to remark, that the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
George Washington: “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
James Madison: “The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it.”
The best recent summation of the ideals of America comes from Norman Podhoretz in the October 2012 issue of Hillsdale College’s Imprimis, in a speech titled “Is America Exceptional?”:
First of all, unlike all other nations past or present, this one accepted as a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. What this meant was that its Founders aimed to create a society in which, for the first time in the history of the world, the individual’s fate would be determined not by who his father was, but by his own freely chosen pursuit of his own ambitions. In other words, America was to be something new under the sun: a society in which hereditary status and class distinctions would be erased, leaving individuals free to act and to be judged on their merits alone. There remained, of course, the two atavistic contradictions of slavery and the position of women; but so intolerable did these contradictions ultimately prove that they had to be resolved—even if, as in the case of the former, it took the bloodiest war the nation has ever fought.
Secondly, in all other countries membership or citizenship was a matter of birth, of blood, of lineage, of rootedness in the soil. Thus, foreigners who were admitted for one reason or another could never become full-fledged members of the society. But America was the incarnation of an idea, and therefore no such factors came into play. To become a full-fledged American, it was only necessary to pledge allegiance to the new Republic and to the principles for which it stood.
Thirdly, in all other nations, the rights, if any, enjoyed by their citizens were conferred by human agencies: kings and princes and occasionally parliaments. As such, these rights amounted to privileges that could be revoked at will by the same human agencies. In America, by contrast, the citizen’s rights were declared from the beginning to have come from God and to be “inalienable”—that is, immune to legitimate revocation.
This July 4th, many of us will have the sad shadow of this election hanging over it – where the leading candidates are so far removed from our founding ideals that both agree on government control of healthcare. If our damn politicians cannot restore our republic – then we should give the Article 5 convention of states strong consideration. If our former rivals – now dear friends – in England can have a democratic uprising to bypass their political elites and restore their rights, then so can we. (For more from the author of “What My Grandfather Taught Me About America” please click HERE)
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