By Thom Little, Ph.D.
Well, it’s over. We have now officially celebrated America’s Semiquincentennial anniversary, and I expect most of you have heard enough about it. I had fully planned NOT to add another piece about our nation’s 250th anniversary, and then something happened.
Recently I had the honor and distinct privilege of hearing Col. Douglas Douds, a professor, historian, and former top gun, speak at the University of Virginia’s Rotunda as part of SLLF’s Melissa Hortman Emerging Leaders Program. Titled “The Eighty-Year Test: An Inheritance Worthy of Stewards,” his remarks began with a discussion of those leaders who established and defended this nation 250 years ago. His ideas and remarks were so inspiring that I had to share a pale summary, so please bear with me as I initiate another discussion about those Founders. However, as Col. Douds reminded us, they were only the first leg of this 250-year relay race, one that is marked by “greatest generations” about every 80 years, with each generation accepting the baton of democracy.
The Founders, blemishes and all, established this nation – the first nation where leadership was not based on royalty, inheritance, bloodlines or bloodshed. Instead, in signing America’s Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, they were pledging “to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” to create a new nation whose government and power was rooted in a people bound by shared principles. Risking everything, they were America’s first greatest generation, but that was not their objective. Their objective was to establish something that would outlive them and leave an inheritance worthy of expanding and protecting to those who would come after them.
Eighty years later, in the 1860s, a new generation of leaders faced a different challenge- to determine if America could actually live up to the lofty promise that “all men are created equal.” Answering that question took more than five years of bloodshed that cost the nation more than 600,000 of its young men. But President Lincoln recognized his obligation to accept the baton of our republic and was willing to lead the nation and ultimately give his life to move the country forward with the promise that this “government by the people, for the people and of the people shall not perish from the earth.” Just like the Founders, these leaders did not seek greatness. They sought faithful stewardship. History remembered them as great because they strengthened the inheritance entrusted to them.
And finally, another eighty years later, those we know as the “Greatest Generation” took the baton in hand, faced with a new crisis: could democracy survive fascist leaders bent on destroying it? The result was a world war that involved 80% of the world’s nations and 70% of its people, where an average of 27,000 people would die each day for six years straight. The United States sacrificed more than 400,000 of its finest for the cause of defending democracy at home and expanding its reach across the globe. The men who stormed the beaches, fired their weapons, and won the battles carried more than their weapons and packs–they carried the promise of Jefferson, the ideals of Washington, and the new birth of freedom offered by Lincoln. They took the baton and moved democracy forward and offered it to the world.
So, here we are, roughly eighty years from the end of World War II, and America’s democracy faces significant challenges from within and beyond her borders. The question is what will you (and I) do? Will we pick up that baton and move democracy forward? Will we defend it from enemies both foreign and domestic? Doing so will not be easy–nothing worth doing ever is. The Founders were willing to risk it all to establish this nation. 600,000 men, including Abraham Lincoln, gave their lives to give it a new birth. The Greatest Generation lost years, lives, and limbs to defend it against tyranny. Maybe we will not be asked to risk our lives or our livelihood, but are you willing to do what’s right even if it means going against the tide of popular opinion, losing an election, standing against a friend or family member?
Leading is about more than getting elected, holding onto power and passing bills. A true leader picks up the baton, respects the past, honors the present, and builds a future that we can pass on to the next generation. Will you pick up that baton and continue the race?
