Daily Herald opinion: We have endured much in 250 years of freedom; let’s continue to use what we have learned

It is a story so oft-repeated and timeworn that Benjamin Franklin’s curt remark about the new Constitution has all but lost its impact. But as America prepares to celebrate 250 years of independent government, the encounter carries a newly relevant resonance.

A Philadelphia socialite is said to have asked the celebrated Founding Father whether the 1787 Constitutional Convention had produced a republic or a monarchy. Franklin’s famous reply: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

On Saturday, the nation has an answer of its own to Franklin’s dark warning.

Yes, Dr. Franklin, we can keep it. Including the devastating war and fitful early efforts that led to it, we have done so for a quarter of a millennium.

To be sure, we’ve not had an easy go of it. Political strife in countless forms has torn at the sleeves of the nation in practically every era. We have struggled almost from the beginning with the peculiar balance between tolerating the freedoms and cultures of others while expressing those of our own. We have had only too many Lincolnian tests of whether any nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … can long endure.”

And yet, we have endured.

We have in our own time cause for concern about whether we can make another 250 years. A deferential Supreme Court seems content with steady monarchical expansion of authority in the executive branch of our unique three-way balance of powers. Extremist minority interests grow ever stronger in the battle for control of our political landscape — and ever more ready to do combat with each other. Our very president pounds a constant drumbeat of unfounded doubt about the security of our most sacred democratic foundation, the ballot box.

Ours could not readily be called a time for optimism.

And yet, we have endured. We have endured that “great civil war” of Lincoln’s time. We have endured the nullification crisis of Jackson’s. We have endured two devastating world wars. We have endured conflicts over labor rights and challenges to our financial systems and German shepherds and police batons attacking peaceful marchers in the streets.

There is nothing in our history nor in our present to lead us to expect anything different in the coming decades and centuries. Democratic, tolerant freedom is hard work. It may even be said to be contrary to our human nature. In that sense, what we celebrate Saturday is not just two and a half centuries of freedom, but also two and a half centuries of willingly subordinating our selfish interests to the larger interest of our fellow men and women, to the high ideals to which we fall constantly short but refuse to abandon.

In Franklin’s time, such endurance could be envisioned only if citizens remained dedicated to democracy’s core values, and demonstrated that dedication by participating in their government, respecting the institutions they authorized to uphold it and committed themselves to high values and honorable principles.

It has never been easy, but we have managed so far.

It is not easy now and it will not be easy next week, next month, next year or next century. But we can continue to manage if we continue to uphold the fundamental values that have brought us here.

So, yes, let’s enjoy the fireworks and the carnival rides and the parades and the cotton candy this weekend, and let’s reflect on the glorious quality of life that democratic freedom has afforded us. And let’s also spend some time remembering what it takes to keep it.