Ordinary Days: Anna, #6

Maintain justice,

   and treat others right.

   (Isaiah 56:1)

 

Dear Anna,

When you visited the Lincoln memorial, you read the two speeches, the only two presidential speeches worthy of being carved in marble. In these carved-in-marble-speeches, Lincoln goes back to the Declaration “Four score and seven years” earlier when: “Our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” We remain “dedicated to the proposition.”

Though Nikole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 project, trashes the signers of The Declaration, she ends up honoring The Declaration itself:

The United States is a nation founded on both an ideal and a lie. Our Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776, proclaims that ‘‘all men are created equal’’ and ‘‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.’’ But the white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst. ‘‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’’ did not apply to fully one-fifth of the country. Yet despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. Through centuries of black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals.

These flawed white men, who signed the Declaration pledging their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor; managed to produce an ideal that “black Americans believed fervently,” and “through the centuries of black resistance and protests,” have “helped the country live up to its founding ideals.” That is true. Great ideals are always bigger than ourselves. It is hard to beat the “founding ideals” of the Declaration: life and liberty and equality and justice for all (13^th Amendment). At our best, we are always trying “to form a more perfect union.” Thus the amendments that you spoke so eloquently about in “We the People”:  13^th, 14^th, and 15^th written into the Constitution “to secure the blessing of liberty” for all our people. We can honor that, can’t we?

Love, PAPA