So when I graduated college with a political science degree, just being there and just seeing the tears in my parents’ eyes, and just seeing the joy—was the greatest thing that’s ever happened in my life. To be an American, for my whole entire family, is truly a blessing. We may have many differences and different things that we do, but at the end of the day, we all as Americans come together as one. We all unify as one.
MAE JOO
KOREAN IMMIGRANT, FOX NEWS PRODUCER AND FORMER AIDE TO THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE, “A PERFECT FIT,” REAL AMERICAN STORIES15
My mom was a hairdresser [before coming to America] and my dad owned his own business as a plumber in Seoul. My first impression [of America] was, “Wow it’s huge,” and it was a little scary. I was holding onto my parents because I did not speak the language....When my parents first decided to purchase this [dry cleaning] store, it was actually going out of business. There wasn’t a lot of customers, so it was a big risk, but it was also one of those things where they really believed in the area, and they thought it would develop, but I remember for a couple of months it was really hard. I think my mom just usually kind of prayed that things would get better and the customers would notice, because it was a big investment. It was their life savings, and it was for us.
...When I was 12, I was always interested in social studies and government, and I thought, “Wow, this is really fascinating,” and I said to my parents, “I really want to work at the White House.” My parents said, “Just know that if you believe you can and work hard, you can.” And so I said, “You know, I think I will.”...The biggest joy and the biggest emotion that I’ve experienced is seeing my mom and dad when I brought them over to the White House for the first time. Just seeing their emotions and how proud they are of what I’ve done so far—that just means the world to me. . . . As a first-generation immigrant, this is the greatest country in the world and you can achieve anything that you set your mind to. I feel as though my parents enabled me to achieve my American dream.
GEORGE PATDAVIL
INDIAN IMMIGRANT, REAL AMERICAN STORIES16
I became a citizen in 1984, and since then, I feel that this is my country, and I love this country. I liked living in other places but never felt a sense of belonging. When you come to the United States, you feel that you are a part of this country. I am accepted and included as one of this great nation. In America, everybody came from somewhere, and so, we are all immigrants.
OLEG HASKEL
RUSSIAN IMMIGRANT, REAL AMERICAN STORIES17
I came here when I was 10 years old. My parents brought me over from Russia. We were among the wave of immigration in the early ’90s that came over here. I think the main reason why my parents brought me and my brother here is for us to grow up and have a better life, to know that their child can go through life without having the hardships that they had to go through—being told what to do and what you can think and what you can’t think. Freedom. You’re perfectly free to go out and make your own decisions. You’re free to practice whatever religion you want.
In Russia I don’t even know if they allowed any religions—definitely not the Jewish religion. I was able to come out and not be afraid about what my future is going to bring for me, and knowing that my brother and my parents are here and they’ll make their future whatever they want it to be, and I’ll make it whatever I want it to be. If you ask me what this country means to me: it means home. This is the place for me. This is where I grew up. This is where I built my life. This is where I see my future.
TOVA FRIEDMAN
HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, REAL AMERICAN STORIES18
This country has always been a symbol of democracy, a symbol of letting people be who they wanted to be. We came with nothing. We came literally with a tiny suitcase. I love what is inscribed in the statue of liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your hungry masses yearning to be free.” It’s still true. You feel like you can be who you are, can be who you want to be—there is no shame. When we talk about diversity, I don’t think you can find diversity in any other country as you can find in America. Because it’s part of our nature to accept people from all over.
DERRECK KAYONGO
UGANDAN REFUGEE, “GLOBAL SOAP PROJECT,” REAL AMERICAN STORIES19
Americans are constantly creating, constantly innovating, so as a new immigrant, as a new American, I have no excuse to come here and not do remarkable stuff. . . . The ultimate dream is that we will all stop saying we don’t have enough resources to solve problems. We do have the resources; all we need is a little bit of creativity....What did JFK say: ask what you—me—can do for your country. That line has come to define my whole life in the U.S.
PART II
DEFINING AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.
—Ronald Reagan
CHAPTER FOUR
FAITH AND FAMILY WHY BOTH ARE UNDER ATTACK
In his book Remember Why You Play, sports columnist and author David Thomas chronicles a season of high school football played by the Grapevine Faith Christian Lions. At one point during the season, Coach Kris Hogan saw an opportunity to teach his team something much more important than how to win a football game.
The Lions were preparing to play against Gainesville State, which was a maximum-security juvenile detention facility housing kids who had been convicted of everything from drugs to armed assault, and whose parents had long ago disowned them. Every game played by the Gainesville State Tornadoes ended with uniformed officers escorting the players to their bus in groups of five, handcuffs at the ready.
Before the game, Coach Hogan sent an email asking his team and their friends and family to do something unusual: he asked for half the Faith Christian fans to “switch sides” and to cheer for the other team’s players, by name. When asked by his own team members why he was making this surprising request, Hogan responded, “Imagine if you didn’t have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you.”
Well, the Gainesville Tornadoes soon learned. On game night, they entered the field to find a line of Faith fans who were cheering for them. Confused at first, the Tornadoes soon realized that hundreds of Faith fans and even cheerleaders were not mistakenly cheering for the wrong team; they heard their own names being shouted from the stands. After that, they played better than they had played all season, and even though they still lost, they gave their head coach a sideline Gatorade shower as if they had just won the state championship. More important, they left the field that night forever changed.
Following the game, both teams came together to pray. A Gainesville player intoned, “Lord, I don’t know how this happened, so I don’t know how to say thank you, but I never would’ve known there was so many people in the world that cared about us.”
As the Gainesville coach left the field, he grabbed Hogan and said, “You’ll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You’ll never, ever know.”
Coach Hogan described the message he intended to send to the youth of Gainesville State that night: “We love you. Jesus Christ loves you. You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth.”
Perhaps the most revolutionary concept espoused by America’s Founders and enshrined in our Declaration and Constitution was that every life has equal value and worth. It is the same ideal that motivated the Founders to go to unprecedented lengths to protect religious liberty.
Indeed, our entire American system of government is premised upon a deeply religious ideal. The proposition that “all men are created equal” expresses a profound religious principle that recognizes God as the ultimate authority over any government. Men are only equal if they are, in fact, crea
ted. Only if we assume we have a Creator can we assert that our rights have been “endowed” to us by God—and only then are those rights “unalienable.”
While these concepts may seem commonplace features of our government today, constituting a government based upon them was radical for the Founders’ generation.
If all men are created equal, then not even the most powerful man, group, or government on earth has the power to infringe or trample upon your rights.
If all men are created equal, then all human beings are equally flawed and equally susceptible to the appeal of power and to the inherent temptation to dictate how others should live their lives. Thus, the best government is a limited one; one that restricts the rule of man by instituting the rule of law, which applies to everyone from presidents to parking lot attendants.
If all men are created equal, then every person is equally accountable to God and to his fellow man to live a life of virtue, productivity, and personal responsibility. This life can only be realized in a society in which each person has the freedom to choose between right and wrong. For freedom to endure, it is vital to cultivate the values that make it possible to sustain such freedoms.
If all men are created equal, then each and every individual has equal dignity and inherent worth, regardless of his or her station in life, ethnic background, political beliefs, or personal failures or achievements.
If all men are created equal, then every life is, in fact, as valuable as any other person on planet Earth—whether youths from the Gainesville State detention facility or the family of Faith Christian fans who cared enough to cheer for someone else’s child and to call them by name.
The story of Coach Hogan illustrates two key truths about American Exceptionalism: the dignity of the individual—the idea that every person does indeed matter—and the centrality of God and faith in American families and communities.
An America that openly rejects faith and the faithful will undermine the surest supports of human dignity in American life. That anti-religious America would soon cultivate a utilitarian culture that elevates the powerful and crushes the weak. But an America that continues to welcome faith and the faithful as integral to American public life will transmit to the poorest and most forgotten segments of society the hope that they too have a right to the American Dream.
ONE OUT OF MANY:THE REVOLUTIONARY AMERICAN MODEL OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
The Founders knew that religious vibrancy in a free society is the surest bulwark against government corruption. And yet their method of promoting and protecting religious vibrancy was an exception to historical precedent. To understand why, one must first recall just how deeply and fervently committed the Founders were not to an abstract notion of faith, but to a faith that was explicitly Christian. Consider the following quotes by some of our most notable Founders, who not only openly articulated their own commitment to Christianity, but their belief that it was only a moral and religious people who could sustain a government of, by, and for the people:• John Quincy Adams said that the Declaration of Independence “laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.”1
• The same Patrick Henry who proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death” also said, “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”2
• John Adams said, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”3 He also declared, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”4
The Founders’ distinctively Christian faith is well documented, as is their conviction that government must be infused with Christian principles. But they resisted the inclination to establish a Christian sect as the official church of the new nation or to impose religious tests to enforce an established church.
Why would men who believed the truths of Christianity were essential to living a moral life and were indispensable to a healthy civil society go to such great pains to ensure the institutions of religion remained separate from government?
History reveals two reasons. First, Christianity, particularly as understood in the post-Reformation era, teaches that every individual is endowed with the solemn dignity and free will to choose either to believe or not to believe. To the Christian, God “stands at the door and knocks”;5 He does not break the door down and forcibly enter. Truth is something that is offered to man and made available for him to voluntarily seek and discover. It is never something he is compelled to accept. It follows that a human government should aspire to do nothing more or less.
Thus our Founders believed that a government is not legitimate unless it is grounded in the principles of individual sovereignty and free will, which begin with freedom of conscience and religious liberty. Only a society that protects the dignity of every person—his ability to believe or not to believe, to speak freely about his beliefs or to remain silent; his right to act according to the dictates of conscience; and ultimately, his prerogative to remain personally accountable to his Creator in each of those areas—could be considered just or morally legitimate.
Second, the Founders knew that whenever there is a state-sponsored religion, the government tends to encroach upon, to increasingly regulate, and finally to dictate religious belief and expression. The government may do this directly, by usurping the right to conscience belonging solely to the individual, church, or religious institution, or indirectly, by gradually eroding the pillars of religious life that generate and strengthen the social vibrancy and moral commitments of a self-governing republic.
Government control over religion historically resulted in a system of “crony clericalism” in which professional clergy fell prey to the temptations of unchecked power and personal greed. This typically led to tyranny, the suffocation of religious liberty, and the snuffing out of every other freedom, as the Founders understood. Paul Johnson described how the first Americans utterly rejected this model:If there was one characteristic which distinguished [America] from the start—which made it quite unlike any part of Europe and constituted its uniqueness in fact—it was the absence of any kind of clericalism. Clergymen there were, and often very good ones, who enjoyed the esteem and respect of their congregations by virtue of their piety and preachfulness. But whatever nuance of Protestantism they served, and including Catholic priests when they in due course arrived, none of them enjoyed a special status, in law or anything else, by virtue of their clerical rank. Clergy spoke with authority from their altars and pulpits, but their power ended at the churchyard gate.6
Instead of looking to entrenched clergy to define religious doctrine, early Americans studied the Bible themselves to learn spiritual truth first-hand. To defend this tradition, they needed a political system that protected the right to discover truth, to openly exchange ideas, and to dissent. This is the foundation of freedom of conscience, which protects believers and non-believers alike.
For this reason, more than any other American habit of liberty, religious liberty is the cornerstone of American freedom and the guiding force that makes America exceptional. The freedom to know and pursue God is not a Republican or Democratic value; neither is it liberal or conservative. It is a universal thirst written into the heart of every person.
Only when a government is firmly committed to the defense of this liberty can religious vibrancy and moral strength be cultivated in a nation. A government that fails to respect the dignity of every person, beginning first and foremost with their freedom of conscience and religious liberty, surrenders its rightful authority to govern, if it ever had it
in the first place.
It bears noting that a commitment to religious pluralism—or affording every individual’s religious beliefs the equal protection of the law—is not the same as saying all beliefs are equal. Tolerating a differing opinion does not make that opinion true, but it does respect the right of the individual to possess it, and it trusts in the equal ability and right of every person to discern truth for himself.
Radical secularists often seek to undermine the moral legitimacy of America’s religious heritage by pointing to occasions in our history when we Americans have failed to live up to our own ideals—whether in the case of slavery, the denial of civil rights, or other instances in which our historic commitment to liberty for all was radically compromised by other political agendas and pursuits.
But in each of these instances, it was our very commitment to moral and religious principle, to an authority and law higher than our own, that impelled us to self-correct and to use our greatest mistakes as the greatest opportunities to reassert the dignity of every human being and the cause of human freedom.
America has indeed endured moments that tested our commitment to freedom and individual dignity, and other moments when we abandoned those core principles in exchange for a more expedient or utilitarian course. But much of what makes America an exceptional nation is that it was in some of those darkest times that America reclaimed its self-evident truths and redeemed, sometimes at great cost, the principle that all people are indeed created equal and endowed with equal dignity and worth.
A Nation Like No Other Page 8