Under the
Christmas tree this year were two “memory books” to
be filled out by your grandparents. The gifts were a bit disconcerting:
a reminder that Nana and Papa won’t be around forever. But
they were also flattering: who among us does not want to think
their memories will be treasured by future generations?
The books
are mostly concerned with the sort of detail (“The first
car I drove was ___,” “I once got into hot water for
___”) that will make for fun comparisons in the future.
But when you come of age, here is what we would really like you
to know: just how lucky we are to be Americans.
As 2005 passes
into 2006, you might be tempted to think otherwise. We are bombarded
with images of war abroad, moral decay within and signs of a collapse
of economic discipline. The “American era,” we are
told, may be passing. As historian Victor Davis Hanson makes clear
in his fine new book, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and
Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, which chronicles the decline
and fall of democratic Athens, it has happened before.
Nobody could
imagine that mighty Athens could lose. But three decades of fitful
but murderous warfare against the expanding empire of Athens by
Sparta and its neighbors, combined with imprudent Athenian leadership
and some bad luck (in the form of a devastating plague that killed
off a quarter to a third of the population of Athens), brought
the capitulation of Athens in 404 B.C.
The great
historian Thucydides, who nearly died of the plague and wartime
rigors himself, observed how Athens also collapsed from within:
“[C]itizens felt it better to spend quickly and live for
pleasure, deeming both their bodies and their possessions as things
of a day. Careful adherence to what was known as honor was popular
with no one, inasmuch as it was doubtful whether anyone would
be spared to attain it….Reverence of the gods or respect
for man’s law there was neither (cq) to restrain anyone.”
Does such
a fate some day await America? Perhaps. But your grandmother and
I were born in the early days of World War II, when half the world
had been overrun by barbarians and America was still suffering
the ravages of Depression. We also lived through the agony of
Vietnam, where the death toll was far higher than Iraq. And then
there was the Great Inflation of the 1970s, which in many ways
was more subtly destructive of the economic and social fabric
than the great deflation of the 1930s.
Each time
America bounced back. And for that we largely have our Founders
to thank. They constructed a durable system that allows for energetic
government in time of true crisis but provides checks and balances
that tend to restrain leaders from pursuing grand illusions of
the sort that led to the downfall of Athens, where democracy was
of a very limited sort.
American
involvement in Iraq may prove to be imprudent. But if it does,
our political system will move to correct the error. It’s
significant that when the Framers met behind closed doors in Philadelphia
in 1789, they understood their aim to be the creation not of a
perfect union but “a more perfect union,” in the words
of the Constitution.
They succeeded.
There may be no permanent victories in our system of compromises,
but that also means there are no permanent defeats. Which is why,
when you are old enough to read this, and with a little effort
on your generation’s part, you too will count your blessings
on living in what will still be the greatest country on earth.
Love, Nana
and Papa.
