A quarter of a millennium has passed since July 4, 1776. “If we lose our freedom here, there is nowhere else to escape. This is the last frontier on Earth” (Ronald Reagan)
Armando Simón commends this article to you, by Federico Punzi writing in Atlantico.
From the footprint of the first man on the Moon to the platoon of soldiers raising the star-spangled flag to Iwo Jima, from the telegraph to the internet, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, there is no human activity in which the United States of America has not “written history” in this quarter of a millennium since the declaration of independence on July 4, 1776.
But it would be trivial to limit ourselves to recalling the American contribution to the development of humanity in every field – scientific, economic, military, cultural – as well as the other side of the coin, the dramatic moments and profound contradictions that have always characterized the United States. From the irrepressible life force of the conquest of the West to the erasure of the civilization of the natives, passing through a Civil War, racial tensions, Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination and the attack of September 11.
The secret ingredient
Several times America has been given up if not for dead, at least inexorably on its way to decline. At the end of the 70s, there was a widespread perception that he was losing the confrontation with the USSR, but we know how it ended. Today there is talk of overtaking China, but it is always postponed to tomorrow.
The revolutionary idea
If, therefore, American greatness is due to men of flesh and blood, at the same time there has not existed in the history of human relations a piece of paper that has given rise to rules of coexistence and institutions that correspond more closely to the idea and political philosophy that were expressed in it.
If those ideas were able to flourish in the “Land of the Free” and find their realization, it is certainly because the founding fathers were faithful representatives of the American character, but also because of the empirical nature, the relevance to human reality of that text, one of the most complete expressions of the Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment.
The idea behind the American Revolution is that the government is accountable to the people, that it has no other source of power than the people (“We the People”). . .
The Final Frontier
Let’s remember one of the anecdotes that Reagan quoted. Hearing the story of a Cuban exile, two Americans commented: “How lucky we are to live in America.” But the Cuban stopped them and said: “How lucky are you? And I, who had a place to escape to.” In that answer is the whole story, Reagan observed. “If we lose our freedom here, there is nowhere else to escape. This is the last frontier on Earth… man’s last, best hope on Earth.” Let’s remember that.
Read it all here.
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The fight goes on.