How did we get here? Why do we have what we have? Freedom to speak, travel, read, iPhones? Why does the world look to us for security, innovation, relief in crisis, peace, and stability? Why are we the “go to” where everyone wants to go to? Because America is not an accident. If you could wave a wand and suddenly teach all those high school and college kids to appreciate America, to cherish America, to understand how lucky they are, what would that act be?
Celebrating Flag Day
We cannot show them how our Founders lived, fought, and wrote the Constitution, and carried on with no electric heat or light, no air conditioning, no cars, trucks, buses, trains, planes, telephones, let alone iPhones, no antibiotics, no Advil or aspirin, no pain relievers in surgery or childbirth, Yet, they pressed on, gave their all for our freedom!
We cannot relive before them Lincoln’s endless ailments, the stress of knowing he and our soldiers and their nerve-wracked families lay the survival during the Civil War. We cannot show them how Lincoln wrote and delivered the Gettysburg Address fevered with smallpox, honoring 51,000 casualties from the battle.
We cannot take them back to the fierce fighting of the Normandy invasion during WWII, as they fought to liberate Europe, the fear as they hit Sicily or rescued their fellow soldiers at Bastogne, both under General Patton.
We cannot show them the horror of freezing to death, fighting to their death, being overrun at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, the jungle peril, disease, and daily death encountered in Vietnam, wounds, visible and invisible that shattered the sensitive, calloused, and mental scars that live on today!
We cannot show them how Black Americans rose with force of will, patience, strength, faith and confidence from the Tuskegee Airmen to Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of State, or how millions of Americans of every ethnic battled poverty, eyes on the far horizon, dreamed, worked, fought, and never gave up their dream!
So, you may ask, what can we do? How do we convey that America is not an accident, that it is the product of incalculable, unimaginable faith, bravery, risk, and the courage to fight, fall, rise, and fight some more, never giving up, suffering with selflessness, risking all, losing it, yet rallying?
The answer is without reading, watching, talking, thinking, praying, and wishing to grasp the great, truly exceptional history of this nation, appreciation for where we are, what we enjoy, why we have it, and what is thus expected of us in our time.
With close relatives buried at Arlington, Memorial Day not so far off, and one for teaching, consider just offering to take a class of fifth, eighth, or eleventh graders, or maybe college
freshmen on a walk with a veteran through a veterans’ cemetery or even the veteran’s monuments in Washington DC.
A walk with a young person through a military cemetery, at first mysterious and uncomfortable, becomes reflective, inquiring, understanding, and appreciative. We know how it works. They must, too. So wave the wand, find time to go and teach our children that America is not an accident. Remember to honor our veterans at Memorial Day!
Condensed article courtesy of AMAC and author Robert Charles, a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). Robert released his new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).