I am a patriot.

I love this country.

But what I mean by "this country" is an ideal; it is an ideal established in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and furthered in Amendments to the Constitution in the couple hundred or so years since 1789.

But I find myself sad, even depressed, because I see this country, my country, unraveling.

All because of fear.  A fear of personal safety, not a fear about a threat to the republic.  I am reminded of Patrick Henry and his "Give me liberty, or give me death."  Today it seems we'd have 50 million Republicans chant, "Give me liberty, or ... not.  Just don't let anyone hurt me."

I wrote a diary a while ago about a Joseph Ellis piece I saw in the Times in which he laments the frenzied destruction of the nation because of a trivial threat.  This weekend my local paper published a missive (free reg required) about how apparently us Constitutional ignoramuses don't understand what a HUGE threat terrorism poses, and so I wrote another diary (and an LTE that'll get published this week). And DarkSyde did a story about the same thing today.

Seems to be a theme among my thoughts: there is no power on earth that can destroy the United States of America, except from within.  

So today, all day, I've been thinking of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.  Read this, and hear greatness; read this and hear what this nation is and what this nation can be:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 (Note: This is the text of the Hay draft, and he is crazy with commas so I took out a couple for readability. I apologize.)

I get stuck on that first part: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

That's an astonishing little bit of prose, in that it captures (for me) the hope, the ambition, the promise of this nation's establishment.  The Founders and Framers  were men of the Enlightenment; they were well-read and curious, and above all, they were brave: they were giving over the government of this nation to the rubes, on the grand assumption that we are rational and are adequate to the task. (Granted, they had set up some safeguards, but in general the point is sound.)

They gave the government to the people.  Not a King.  Not an oligarchy.  Not a group of really smart people, but just folks.  Wow.

And the last part:
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

To what was it they "gave the last full measure of devotion"?  It was to the preservation of the republic.  But what is "the republic"?  Is it homes, cars, land, family?  Nope. It is our Constitution.  That is what makes the US what it is; that is what makes us who we are as Americans.  Those Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg died with a battlecry of "Union!" on their lips.  They died for the dream, the ideal, embodied in a Constitution laid down well before any of them were born.

Of course the Constitution is not perfect.  But it's pretty nifty. "Our fathers" generated a whole new form of government, a country of laws, not of men; a secular government, deriving its authority from the governed.  No church, no divine right, no magical powers.  We decide the limits of government.  We decide the limits on the powers of the executive.  No one is above the law; we collectively determine our morality, our hopes, our passions, our values.  Separation of powers.  Constraints on human nature.  Representative democracy.  Equality.  Liberty.  Rights.

It is a compassionate, just, whole vision of a land where everyone counts the same, every one matters, everyone has a chance.

Our heritage as Americans is fraught, no doubt.  But the ideal, the hope, the dream, the potential shines still and is unbounded, and is in sore danger.  It is being destroyed by petty tyrants, by weak men, driven by fear and greed, children in adult bodies.

And there is only us to stop it.  So I would say to my fellow Kossacks, let us then endeavor to rid our Constitution of the small men who would destroy it.  Let us endeavor to make ourselves proud of being Americans.  Let us take this country and not merely return it to the vision of "our fathers," but let us endeavor to make it better, make it fulfill its calling as a grand experiment in human governance.  Let us show the world that the dream of a small group of well-intentioned, 18th-century people can triumph over the petty, greedy, shallow hollow men.

The choice is ours.  We can pop another beer and get back on the couch, or we can take this country back.

What say you?