In 1776, a small group of extraordinary men gathered to declare before Mankind and God that they were determined to make an awesome dream into a reality. The creation of America was one of those rare moments the very air seems rarefied and filled with the exotic scents of tomorrow’s promise. It was a moment when History held its breath, startled once again into an awareness that individual human beings are a force beyond calculation. Humans are dangerous. They can change the airy nothingness of a dream into a formidable reality that can dictate the destiny of the world.
Dangerous, dangerous human beings.
Dangerous dreamers.
All people dream.
They dream of making giant steps, of having destiny’s fulfillment within their own control, of a land of milk and honey, of the fabled realms of gold. With legend, myth, and art’s wild force, they batter down the walls of closed reality and seek the open space of their heart’s desire.
Historically, this search has taken many forms. Some dreamed of an Aladdin’s Lamp; some of the Open Sesame to Ali Baba’s treasure cave; others sought the alchemy of Reason’s search—the Philosopher’s Stone that would convert all baser metals to the treasured gold. Still other’s sensed the magic of a special place—a Shining City on a Hill, the wondrous lure of Utopia’s calm streets and measured ways.
These dreams are as old as man, as young as childhood’s sweet imaginings. They are a part of all of us.
Yet while we dream, around us is a Miracle awaiting recognition. We know part of it. It’s called America, and we think we know its measure and its place. It has been a living force now for over two hundred years. And those of us who know the privilege of its Spirit’s call, its freedoms and its special ways, believe we know and value what we have.
Perhaps we do.
Yet to feel the vibrant fierceness of its call, to feel the sense of wild, free glory in its air, to capture in our hearts and minds that sense of joy, of triumph and of truth that is America, we must go back in time to when this great expanse of land was Promise Incarnate, to when this continent was a living place on which to set the Form of the Ideal.
We must go back in time to when a group of men stood at the brink of a wonder that surpassed all dreams of old. Back to when a group of men—committing their lives and fortunes and their souls—found the words that could express the finest thoughts of mankind. They made their Declaration and their pledge, fought their war and won their place in time, wrote their Constitution setting forth the form, added the Amendments specifying Rights, separated powers, guaranteed defense, set the checks and balances. They declared the wide Frontier and sent forth the men and women who would make the land their own—a Nation new to Man.
In giant steps we spread across a truly promised land. We faced the growing world with confidence and strength. We took an untamed land and made it bear the Honey and the Wax—the Sweetness and the Light. We built the city and the church, the temple and the gold rush town, the schoolhouse and the wild saloon, the farm and ranch and railroad line, the bridge and road and barbed-wire fence. The land demanded courage and repaid it thousand-fold.
There was real metal gold for some to find, but truer gold was in the folk themselves. The storied Melting Pot did not make everyone alike—it made us all American. The Dream burned with a raw, fierce heat. At its best it was the storied crucible: Its searing heat stripping away the dross to leave the pure untarnished gold of Man’s true worth. At its best, it was superb.
And at its worst, as with the world itself, no place escaped the cannon and the lash. Barbarians have always lived with us, no place is free from suffering and wrong. Our continent of promise and of grace did not escape its share of dreadful acts. The world’s wrongs had endured so long and in so many realms that it seemed natural and normal to life. The ugliness and evil of history’s tales, of baseless prejudice and hate, of mindless cruelties and of guilt . . . . Had we been gods . . . . But we were not. And so the answers had to come with Time, with bitter fighting and with thought, with reasoned argument and rage. There was a whole wide world of slavery and vice, of cruelty and of hate, of pogroms and of pain—and we were not immune from any of the ways of Man. There were those among us who lived an age-old human horror—slavery—yet the forces were already there to drive the coming Emancipation.
For America was something new and strange. It carried in its soul a set of new beliefs. It looked to a Creator and a Cause; it looked to Natural Laws that could not be abridged; it spoke of the Rights of Man. And by defining “Man” in ever widening arcs of searching Truth, the strength of these beliefs expanded through four-score years until “Man” began to encompass all that it should have all along. For truly there is but one race of us: The Human Race. And finally it composed itself of Men and Women both.
Those who formed America could not at first fully heed the terms of the Miracle they had forged on the anvil of the Enlightenment. But the contradictions between dream and reality could not stand for long. It took less than a century after the Revolution for the inner forces of the true America to explode against the living lie. For America could’t tolerate the nightmare of a people still enslaved. Shuddering in mid-Dream, we fought a Civil War that gave us scars we carry to this day. America made us fight that war. It called forth sacrifice because it was committed to its cause. It reached within it for its Soul—and found it there. The wonder of America is that within its being, contained within the meaning of the Dream, it carries all the form of Truth, and seeks it out. We did not need to look outside America to find the path we followed—it was there all the time. We only needed to make our own commitment to its rigors. We needed only to accept the terms within the Dream. It is mankind’s destiny to be free. The Dream compels Reality, though it may take generations to fulfill its promise.
And because it is a Dream that’s also Real, America translates myth and legend into fact. Aladdin’s Lamp met those who made their way through Ellis Island. The Open Sesame to Ali Baba’s treasure cave re-formed itself as education’s mighty reach. The Philosopher’s Stone that had been sought so long—the secret that would change the basest metals into gold—this Stone became the bedrock of the American values that we shared; became the firm foundation of the family and the law; the cornerstone of every house of worship in the land; the building blocks of which our government was formed.
The Shining City on the Hill was ours to make.
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson's Website, Big Dog's Weblog, Adam's Blog, DragonLady's World, The Bullwinkle Blog, Leaning Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, third world county, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate's Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Right Nation, Wake Up America, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, The Yankee Sailor, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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