Getting away recently with my wife for a week in Bermuda – escaping the cold and dreariness of yet another New England January in advance of predicted snow – was a gift. I first visited here with my just-married wife while I was still a law student all those years ago. Our happiness and the island’s magic seemed a perfect match.
When our plane touched down in St. George’s Parish that beautiful September day in 1970, we felt a world apart as we began our new life together. But the nation we had left a few hours earlier was in turmoil over the Vietnam War. We had lost three of our heroes to violence just a few years earlier, witnessed race riots across the country in the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination – and although we didn’t know it then our country would soon be rushing headlong into Watergate and the impeachment of a president.
America has always had its challenges. We had experienced some of the most tragic. But somehow a resilient America always learned from its mistakes and rose to meet the morning. Leaders always emerged and progress, sometimes painfully slow, proved inevitable.
On that late summer morning decades ago when we landed in Bermuda, despite the turmoil at home and abroad, America remained a grounded, dependable and respected beacon to the world. It knew without hesitation what it valued and what it stood for. We were always in a constant state of striving to make our nation’s enshrined paper promises real and working to maintain and strengthen our alliances overseas to advance the cause of world peace and drive rising prosperity for all peoples across the globe.
Sometimes we fell short or responded way too slowly. Nowhere was that truer than with civil rights and women’s rights, but progress has happened. More is needed. Our country was never perfect nor could it ever stake a claim to be, but it was constantly improving and opening “the dream ” to more and more people. It was our manifest destiny to establish a more perfect union, or so we believed.
Over my lifetime America has most often rewarded hard work, education and ingenuity. Each generation knew it had the opportunity to do better than the one that preceded it.
Indeed, just the very “idea” of America inspired people around the world striving to be free and self-governed. It also inspired millions of hard-working immigrants in our own melting-pot who helped build our nation. We won the war, rebuilt Europe, educated a generation of brave veterans and watched them build the most vibrant and growing middle class in the history of mankind. We have all benefited from the sacrifices and efforts of others; some of whom never made it home.
Politics has always been tough but consensus was the everyday expectation. The nation’s interest almost always trumped partisanship when the chips were down.
Somehow, we managed to come together to govern. Republicans and Democrats held differing views and offered different policy solutions but saluted the same flag and shared common values. There were respected truths that we all accepted. Somehow it worked.
That was our reality and our nation’s greatness the day we landed here for the very first time.
This month when we touched down in Bermuda it felt like we were seeing an old friend after years away. The island was still stunning and it was great to be back but we were all older and witness to more history over those decades of separation. My America felt different, too. It now felt ungovernable. There was an anger and resentment awash in our country fueled by a distrust of government in many quarters. Our country seemed more divided by geography, race, religion and wealth than any time in our lifetime.
Consensus is now perceived to be the tool of the weak and not the principled. Money has taken charge of more politically self-interested outcomes than I recall and civility seems a needless if not abandoned art.
Our nation’s language is coarser, our impatience greater and our intolerance rising. Our free press is under daily assault by our president, and partisanship and zero-sum politics are fully in control. Both major parties own the blame.
Our allies are often inexplicably mistreated and castigated by our president. Inclusive progress seems no longer to have a friend in Washington, our nation’s proud heritage of diversity is increasingly cause for separation and not celebration, and who we are and what we value as a nation is in question both at home and overseas. All of us, regardless of our politics, need to be concerned. Something bad is happening.
I have not witnessed an inward-facing America during my lifetime. I have not seen an America declare that its self-interest is best served by pulling up the gang planks at its shores and hurling insults at world bodies and dangerous, unstable dictators of rogue states. I have never witnessed an America retreat from its vital, moral role in the world order or demean the critical role of diplomacy in ensuring world peace. America has never played the bully. It’s not who we are.
America’s resolve has been tested before but mostly by forces beyond our shores. The most pressing challenges to America now seem equally within our borders. My money is on the American people to reclaim the values and core principles that propelled our nation to the heights it has achieved through dogged determination and selfless generational sacrifice. We need to. But it won’t happen until we again recognize certain core truths, embrace compromise, restore integrity to our national discussions, stop questioning everyone’s motives with whom we disagree, understand and respect our system of government and embrace the rule of law, become better informed voters, cease being turned against our fellow citizens on purely partisan, agenda-driven, divisive social issues and once again willingly accept our near-sacred obligation to pass on an even better country than we inherited.
It is far too easy to place the blame for all our nation’s ills on our current president. That would be a mistake and free us from responsibility. We all need to step up. We need to take ownership. Nothing is assured and the world is nervously waiting. A lesser America will imperil millions at home and around the world. We still have time but less than we might think. But I am optimistic we will rally.
(John T. Broderick Jr. was the founder and first director of the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Policy at UNH Law in Concord.)