“National Identity” by Sydney Williams
As individuals, we are a combination of genetics and experience. Similarly, the United States is a product of its genetic makeup – its people, natives and immigrants – and its experiences, which includes everything that has happened over the past four centuries – the carving of towns and villages from the wilderness, the curse of slavery and its abolition, and especially the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Our experiences include the building of roads, railroads and the telegraph, the Civil War, the taming of the west, the industrialization of the economy and the rise of cities, schools and colleges, two world wars, the Cold War and its aftermath, and the internet. Our Country’s genetic makeup continues to expand as immigrants become citizens and new births add to our population. And, so do our experiences. Everything we do – the good and the bad – add to who we are.
We are a polyglot nation, not easily categorized. We are not, as The New York Times with its 1619 Project would have us be, a nation imbued with systemic racism, a country of victims and oppressors. On the other hand, we, as a nation, should be aware of the warts in our past. God, it has been said, cares little of what we have done. He cares about we do and will do.
Robert E. Lee has become symbolic of white oppression. As a defender of slavery and Commander of the Army of Virginia, he deserves reproach. But hatred for what he represented in that aspect of his life blinds us to the whole man. Like all of us, he was complex. His father “Light-Horse Harry” Lee was a Revolutionary War General and Governor of Virginia who landed in debtors’ prison around 1812. He abandoned his family and moved permanently to the West Indies. Lee was raised by his mother who died a month after he graduated second in his class from West Point, where he later served as Superintendent. When the Civil War broke out, he was torn between allegiance to the United States and loyalty to Virginia, his place of birth. (It was a time when people traveled less; so, one’s home state meant more than it does today.) In 1865, at Appomattox, General Lee surrendered his sword without animus to a younger General Grant, who had graduated in the bottom half of his class at West Point. In the aftermath of the War and at a time of bitter recriminations on the part of many Southerners toward the victorious North, Lee supported reconciliation with a reborn United States, later led by his former foe.
Today, Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia does not alone define who we are, but neither do New Hampshire’s White Mountains, Arizona’s Grand Canyon, New York City’s tall buildings, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, Florida’s Panhandle or Minnesota’s lakes. The United States is all these things and more. We are the newest immigrants and descendants of those who immigrated four hundred years ago; we descend from slaves and slave owners; we come from most every country in the world and represent every nation, race and religion. The United States is an idea, forged in the fertile minds of our Founding Fathers. For two hundred and thirty-three years, their words of hope and promise have drawn immigrants to these shores. Before that, we were a land to which people escaped, yearning to be free. We are the past, the present and the future. To deny the past, no matter how hurtful it may seem to some, is to pretend we are different than what we are.
One problem with those who would like to “fundamentally transform” our country and its identity is not their policies (though I disagree with them), it is the adamancy of their advocacy – their silencing of dissenting opinions. It is a campaign that originated in college classrooms and that has now made its way onto the front pages of newspapers, in daily radio and TV news reports and into the boardrooms of our nation’s corporations, churches and eleemosynary institutions. It is an orthodoxy that has become pervasive, with overtones of Karl Marx and Nazi Germany and reminiscent of George Orwell’s “Newspeak.” Our identity should be that of a people freely expressing opinions without fear of retaliation. We should be a nation that treats all people equitably, that does not compartmentalize by race, sex or religion. We should be a nation where people succeed based on their skills, effort and “the content of their character.” We should honor symbols of liberty, like the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. And we should acknowledge the union of the American states, newly strengthened 155 years ago when Robert E. Lee accepted his loss and chose to stand, as one nation, with the people of the United States.
As a country composed of myriad races, religions and ethnicities, it has always been difficult to define our identity. Our genetic makeup is in flux. This has always been so. In his 1878 novel The Duke’s Children, Anthony Trollope has the American scholar and businessman Ezekiel Boncassen, a self-made son of a tailor, speak to two young English aristocrats about his country: “The influxions[1] are so rapid, that every ten years the nature of the people is changed.” Regardless of our outward appearances, what distinguishes and unites us are our freedoms. One can argue that freedom has not always been equitably applied, and that is true. But no one can deny that we were the first country to exalt the concept of individual liberty and have it embedded in a written Constitution.
Another problem with those who would transform the U.S. is that equality and liberty are incompatible. Demand for equality denies the aspirant liberty to succeed. And liberty to succeed means some will fail, so not all will be equal. Nevertheless, we are endowed with equal natural rights. Everyone is (or should be) equal before the law and the right to vote is shared equally, but we are not equal in aspiration, talent, or intellect. (Put me alongside Michael Jordan if you doubt my words.) Our guiding star is the promise in the Declaration of Independence of liberty. It did not come all at once, but, despite imperfections, we are a free people. We cannot let a rising tide of cancel culture and conformity undo what has taken so many years to construct. We cannot let the McCarthyism of those who claim speech constitutes violence forbid the utterance of opposing opinions. We cannot permit this assault on our liberties It is the right to speak without retribution that is essential to our national identity. We lose sight of that at our peril.
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