In anticipation of tomorrow’s holiday, Scott and I visited yesterday afternoon with noted American historian and novelist Thomas Fleming. He knows a lot about America’s history, and one of his main focuses has been the revolutionary period and the men who made those fateful decisions to declare independence from the mother country, fight a war to ensure it, and later write a constitution to preserve it.
What kind of men were these? Supermen? Well, from earlier interviews with Fleming and my own reading of history, I know the answer is clearly “no.”
Our founders—Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and all the rest were yes—intelligent, gifted and thoughtful men. But…they were men..mortal men. And they were victims of the same frailties that afflict us all.
Arrogance, jealousy, vanity, all the faults with which we struggle, they struggled with as well.
And, if we think this nation has problems today, just think what these guys faced: fighting a revolution while the newly declared nation was divided over whether the fight was worth it. Amazingly, they survived and prevailed.
These brilliant, but flawed, mortal men became immortalized in the pages of our nation’s history.
So, as we celebrate the fourth of July, we might quietly acknowledge that even though our nation’s problems seem intractable today, they are not. And, with the efforts of mortal men and women, we will do what our founders did—survive and prevail.
What kind of men were these? Supermen? Well, from earlier interviews with Fleming and my own reading of history, I know the answer is clearly “no.”
Our founders—Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and all the rest were yes—intelligent, gifted and thoughtful men. But…they were men..mortal men. And they were victims of the same frailties that afflict us all.
Arrogance, jealousy, vanity, all the faults with which we struggle, they struggled with as well.
And, if we think this nation has problems today, just think what these guys faced: fighting a revolution while the newly declared nation was divided over whether the fight was worth it. Amazingly, they survived and prevailed.
These brilliant, but flawed, mortal men became immortalized in the pages of our nation’s history.
So, as we celebrate the fourth of July, we might quietly acknowledge that even though our nation’s problems seem intractable today, they are not. And, with the efforts of mortal men and women, we will do what our founders did—survive and prevail.