Celebrating Those Who Answer the Call for Freedom

From the Desk of Chuck Fuller, CEO, The Results Company

 
Thank you for the privilege of sharing this message with you today, America’s 249^th birthday.
 
In my younger years, I brimmed with confidence that, if confronted with some urgent national call to action, I would rise to the occasion and charge forward to victory. Of course I would do, and shame on those sad souls from the history books who wavered when their cause needed them most.
 
But it’s easy to feel that way with the foreknowledge that victory was indeed the outcome. I now have the wisdom to understand that risking one’s reputation, livelihood, family, and even life – as the American patriots did in the revolutionary era – is an act of uncommon courage.
 
In Our First Civil War, H. W. Brands describes the mood in the early 1770s:
 
“John Adams would say that the American Revolution was in the ‘minds and hearts’ of the American people before it produced the armed struggle between the United States and Britain; what Adams neglected to mention was the degree to which those minds and hearts were at odds, one American against another.
 
“In every colony, and then every state, were thousands of men and women who wanted nothing to do with independence. They valued the freedom and security they had enjoyed under British rule, and they resented the rebel Patriots for bringing on the war. These Loyalists cast their lot with their mother country; the result was the shattering of trust among neighbors, the rending of families, and murderous conflict convulsing in the Carolina backcountry. . .
 
“George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were the unlikeliest of rebels, from all outward appearance. Washington in the 1770s stood at the apex of Virginia society, possessing everything material a man of his place and time could desire. Franklin was more successful still, having risen from humble origins to world fame, a feat he could have accomplished in no other sphere than the British empire. John Adams might have seemed a more obvious candidate for rebellion, being of cantankerous temperament generally. Even so, Adams revered the law, and rebellion begins with an overthrow of existing laws. Yet all three men became rebels against the regime that had fostered their success.”
 
This festering division among the people really didn’t resolve itself until conflict with the British intensified. In 1774, the Continental Congress remained in “a nearly hopeless deadlock,” as described by Jeff Shaara in The Glorious Cause:
 
“In Philadelphia, the Continental Congress has continued lengthy and rancorous debate, many men of great influence still clinging to the notion that America must remain part of Britain and remain loyal to the king. Facing a nearly hopeless deadlock, the congress is stunned to learn that King George has declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion, that any hope of reconciliation or compromise has been swept away by the hand of the monarch, who will accept nothing but the complete capitulation of his subjects. The move sways the congress to begin, for the first time, talk of independence.”
 
A few months later, in spring 1775, the skirmish at Lexington and Concord all but sealed the reality that full-blown conflict was to come. “The battle resulted in 273 British casualties and 95 American casualties,” Rick Atkinson wrote in The British Are Coming. “This crucial chapter not only documents the beginning of open conflict but also foreshadows the long and bloody struggle for American independence that lay ahead.”
 
Which side of the first “civil war” would I have chosen for myself and my family? Would I have stayed on the sidelines, perhaps until violent conflict became inevitable after Concord? I have no idea, which only compounds the reverence in which I hold our forefathers.
 
Yes, this Fourth of July I celebrate the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world. But I also celebrate the patriots who put their livelihoods, reputations, families, and lives at risk in the years leading up to July 4, 1776. Many of them had good reason not to upset the status quo.
 
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Division and fierce debate have always been part of America’s DNA, as we can see from the national mood in the 1770s. But I imagine everyone reading this can look around and sense that we seem particularly divided today. How do we return to “normal” divisions and debate?
 
In my opinion, it’s always a great balancing act for succeeding generations to progress into modernity while still conserving the values that make the whole enterprise work. Like a train venturing into new terrain, the wood and metal tracks underneath it must keep their shape. This is the idea of “conservatism” in its purest form.
 
I think it’s an important concept that ought not get lost in the political fights over camps generously labeled “liberal” and “conservative” today. Because there is great utility in imparting the values and principles of a national culture into every generation, rather than hoping they will just transfer by some sort of osmosis. I suspect this underlies some of the national debates playing out right now over university curricula, because how we educate our children is, of course, central to this question.
 
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I’ll leave you with this. As the Founding Fathers gathered for the inaugural session of the Continental Congress at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia, the delegates argued about opening the session with prayer and who was qualified to pray. They couldn’t even agree on this!
 
As described by Meacham in American Gospel, things could have gone either way. Sam Adams rose and said he “was no bigot, and could hear a prayer from a gentleman of piety and virtue who was at the same time a friend of his country.”
 
Meacham continues, “The next morning, Reverend Duche opened by reading the 35^th Psalm. ‘Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help.’ . . . John Adams was at once stunned and moved. ‘I never saw a greater effect upon an audience,’ he told Abigail. ‘It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that morning.’ Then, without warning, Duche ‘struck out into an extemporary prayer,’ Adams wrote, ‘which filled the bosom of every man present.’”
 
Given my faith today, I like to think this would have ignited and united me to the cause of the patriots of that day. May this same message ignite our spirits on this July 4th to celebrate and conserve the values that make the whole enterprise work – the United States of America.
 
With a humble and thankful heart to live in this great and free country,