Janice Ellis missouriindependent.com
Throughout history, despite what it confronted, America has had leaders emerge whose words and actions helped shape its identity and its voice.
How would you characterize America’s identity today?
Where is America’s voice?
At critical points in the history of this country, it has, more often than not, been resoundingly clear. But, today, it is garbled at best.
Our identity has become so muddled during the first two decades of this century that it likely depends on who you ask.
While one or more leaders may help define America’s identity and voice, clarify it, and epitomize it with their actions, the identity itself goes beyond a personality, beyond the vocalization of precepts and principles or specific initiatives.
A nation’s identity has presence and power. It characterizes ages, codifies eras, creates the culture, and more often than not, foretells the nature of a future society.
We have only to recall a few critical periods in America’s history and the personalities that led us through them — from the Declaration of Independence to the end of the Cold War — to be poignantly, and sometimes painfully, reminded of the great void that exists today.
As the 21st Century unfolds, what is America’s current identity, her voice? If you are able to discern it, what does it say about where we are headed domestically or globally?
Admittedly, there may not have always been agreement with the policies or way of life that came about as a result of a course America took, but, at least, historical accounts show that contemporaneous Americans had a better sense and understanding of the rallying cries, and the shared beliefs in which they were grounded.
We only have to recall and revisit critical periods in American history.
Through the work and words of the founding fathers and the framers of the Constitution — John Adams, Thomas Paine, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others —America gained its identity and voice that determined its course through the end of the 18th century, and it was clear.
Throughout the 19th century, America’s identity and voice defined the ages from the establishment of institution of slavery to the Civil War that ended it. And the Jim Crow era that began after that war and lingered into the 20th century until the Civil Rights Movement that fought to end it.
America’s identity during these critical periods in its history was represented by many. Abe Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Strum Thurmond, Lester Maddox, George Wallace, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., to name a few.
Also, during the 20th century, World War I was fought to make the world safe for democracy. Whether it did or not, historic events characterized the decades that followed.
America roared in the twenties, crashed economically in the early thirties, and joined the war, World War II, to defeat Hitler and Nazi Germany in the forties. And we lived and breathed the Cold War and its remnants for the next nearly fifty years.
We all know these seminal historical events and the leaders that brought us through them: Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Ronald Regan.
During any of these periods, America’s identity, her voice was discernible if not always strong. The times seem more definable, the direction clearer, even while we lived through them.
It seems a greater sense of American purpose and culture was passed on from one generation to the next back then. It was inculcated in almost every aspect of our lives, from lively debate around the dinner table, the town square, to the classrooms.
Today, through technology, we have the ability to be connected 24/7 and have access to information, policymakers, and can participate in our government and political processes at whatever level we choose.
We are able to help define America’s identity and voice unlike any other period in our history. But are we?
When we look at the state of American politics today, where are the political and philosophical giants that represent America’s identity, her voice?
They are sorely missing.
It is evident with the current political, social and economic divisiveness and discordance as exemplified by the vitriol that dominate public discourse in areas that have traditionally defined America’s identity: how immigrants are regarded and treated; the centrality of inalienable rights for all; the preeminence of the rule of law — to name a few.
What has happened to America being identified as a nation of immigrants? Afterall, America was and continues to be built by immigrants.
What about the apparent retreat or denial of the inalienable rights “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” when it comes to women? Women seem to be losing rights that they have fought to gain. Too many citizens continually face obstacles in exercising their right to cast a vote and exercise other rights.
That is just a snapshot of what is happening on the home front.
During the last decade, we have also watched the perception of America’s identity change on the world stage, based on the leadership or lack thereof, and the how domestic and global issues have been dealt with or failed to be dealt with.
Whether those issues involve the Ukraine war, the Middle East conflict, our role in the NATO Alliance, relationship with Russia, China, Climate Accord, nuclear disarmament, to name a few.
How does the current state of American politics and policies help clarify its identity and voice?
What is it saying to us here at home? What is the message conveyed abroad?
How would you define this present age? Who are the leaders that will help America reclaim its identity, find its voice?
We need not wait for historians to define it, to characterize and make sense of it at some future date.
We can help shape it now, if we dare.
Or we sit idly by and watch as we stumble into the future.
Even worse when a volume — “When America Lost Its Way”— is included in the annals of history.
