Measuring a Nation’s Greatness

By Tim Lynch | July 24th, 2024 |

America’s greatness cannot be measured simply by calculating the difference between our successes and failures as a nation. While we must always remember both, there are intangibles that must be considered when evaluating our nation from a moral standpoint. Some modern American politicians have made a great show about “making America great again,” while others have shot back that America needed to be great in the first place in order to be “great again.” This topic of America’s greatness – or lack thereof – is in some ways the crux of what little honest debate is currently taking place in our country, and it deserves a greater exploration, to which we shall devote ourselves presently.

It can be denied by no one, least of all anyone who has dedicated any amount of time to the study of history, that America, like all nations, has been imperfect in its record of establishing, maintaining, and preserving the individual liberty of its people. It is easy, through the lens of hindsight, to wonder how our Framers could have gotten it so wrong when whole races and genders of people were denied suffrage in our system. So, too, may people 200 years from today look back on us with disdain at our shortcomings. We are all products of the times in which we live, and while the Framers had certain understandings of the world that we no longer share, the words themselves that they put to paper apply no less today than they did then – perhaps they even apply more. Is it the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that makes us great? Is it slavery and the treatment of indigenous peoples that make us awful? Maybe it is not that simple.

America was founded on principles derived from the thought and work of John Locke, who believed in the inherent right of self-ownership – that each person is born in possession of property, that being their own lives – and as such, each person also is born with the right of self-determination. Locke’s view, a revolutionary one at the time, was that government’s responsibility was to protect this basic right to life, liberty, and property, and that only government by consent of the governed was just. If this sounds a bit like the words of Jefferson in 1776 or Lincoln in 1865, it is because those words were inspired by the principles that led to our nation’s foundation. Neither Lincoln, who took a nation to war with itself in order to preserve itself, nor Jefferson, who risked the gallows as a traitor to the Crown when he aligned himself with America’s revolutionary cause, did the things they did or wrote the things they wrote because they believed in freedom only for a few – they fought for a system they believed was capable of preserving freedom for future generations.

Therein lies the question: Is our system capable of securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity? It is, but there is a caveat. Our system only works if we, the people of the United States, remain dedicated to the experiment of self-government and remain willing to fight for it when it is threatened by adversaries on either side of our borders. Great figures like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Alice Paul, and great accomplishments like the emancipation of the slaves and the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the liberation of Europe from the evil of Nazism are, in and of themselves, necessary but not sufficient conditions to prove that we are a great nation. The denial of rights to women and the treatment of the indigenous peoples and the slave trade and Jim Crow are necessary but not sufficient conditions to prove that our nation is not great. What is that intangible thing to which we can look for the answer? It is not so intangible after all: It is you. It is you and me, our neighbors, our communities, average Americans fighting for their lives just for a chance at peace and prosperity and something worth passing along to their children. The average American is what makes our nation so good.

This may sound corny or inauthentic, but it rings so true to me. I believe with all of my heart that the vast majority of Americans have more in common than in difference. What makes our nation great is that our people have the power to overcome the adversities we face. What breaks my heart the most is how many of my countrymen do not know and do not believe in their own power, because they’ve been beaten into submission or into exhaustion by those bent on stealing our system out from under us and using it for their benefit instead of for ours.

Should we celebrate our wins and ignore our failures? No – this path leads to a self-aggrandizing disconnection from reality. Should we focus on our failures and ignore our wins? No – this path leads to demoralization, cynicism, and self-destruction. I will leave it for you to decide if our wins outweigh our losses, but let me leave you with one more possibility: maybe it is not about wins or losses at all. I began by asserting that America’s greatness isn’t how many times we’ve succeeded or failed at delivering the promise of freedom to our people. Perhaps the record isn’t what is important – it’s the promise itself. Though the promise was made by people who didn’t understand freedom as we do today, is it still a promise worth keeping? I think it is, and I hope you will join me in finding a way to deliver on that promise, celebrate our successes, remember our shortcomings, and work not towards being “great again,” but always being greater than the day before.

© Tim Lynch 2024 for the sole use by the Liberty Register. All rights reserved. Reproduction or republication without consent prohibited.