(Editor’s note: This is the 8th of 10 articles serializing Executive Editor Michael Ryan’s ebook YouRule: How Saving America Depends Entirely on You And What You Can Do About It.)
Like the moment the nation found out President John F. Kennedy had been shot, everyone remembers where they were when the 9/11 attacks hit.
I was pulling into my parking stall at the newspaper in Topeka, Kansas, listening to NPR when it reported a plane had hit a building in New York. I thought little of it initially, picturing a twin-engine prop in distress and wondering why National Public Radio was having trouble getting a reporter to the scene. Seconds later, of course, the breadth of the horror would come into view for us all, like the protruding nose of a colossal airliner bearing down on an office window.
Mere moments after my colleagues and I watched the World Trade Center towers fall, and no less shaken than any other American, I was tasked with writing an editorial for a special afternoon edition, while the apparent assault appeared to be still underway. Not long after, a second editorial was needed for the next morning’s paper. That night, as many did, I took my young family to church, torn between wanting to shield my children from Daddy’s fears and tears and allowing them to begin to fathom the enormity of the moment. And, as with many Americans, for weeks, maybe months, there was a sick feeling in my stomach—about the ghastly deed, the gruesome aftermath and the chilling uncertainty of the morrow.
But tellingly, not on that fateful day nor in the weeks of dread that followed, did it for one fragment of an instant ever enter my mind that America could end.
Oddly, I can’t honestly say that today.
For one thing, our divisions are chasmic: 70% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans now say they are flat scared of the other party. As former NPR CEO Ken Stern writes in his book Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right, “The political divide is taking the place of race, religion and class … as a specification for marriage.”
Indeed, fully 40% in a 2010 poll said they’d be upset if their kids married not outside their race but outside their political party. Stern calls ideology “the new ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’”—referring to the 1967 movie of the same name in which a couple are shocked to learn their daughter is in a biracial relationship.
More ominously still, we’re losing our ability to govern ourselves—both politically and personally. Increasing numbers of Americans either aren’t familiar with how our system works, choose not to take part in it, or—maybe because of the first two—look at failed systems of socialism and communism and even anarchy with naïve admiration.
That kind of mass fecklessness might go over more smoothly somewhere else; no one had to love the czar or comprehend his ways to live under him. But a self-governed nation depends on a whole lot of selves who are capable of being their own rulers. Thomas Jefferson warned us that, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
No terrorist or foreign combatant could ever do the kind of damage to America that a divided, oblivious, know-nothing, no-show population can do. And is doing. Through our apathy and ignorance we are, in effect, flying planes into the steel and concrete of America’s foundation.
OK, But What Can I Do About It?
The good news is that our task, while immense, is straightforward. Character, community and country are all built the same way: one conscious, virtuous step at a time.
Take inspiration on your way. There’s a lot of it there for the taking. Joseph Warren, the Revolutionary War hero who was actually the one who charged Paul Revere and William Dawes with sounding the alarm that the British were coming, exhorted his compatriots in rousing words that should haunt and hound us today:
“On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.”
What a priceless poke with a stick! “Act worthy of yourselves.” Almost makes you straighten up in your chair, doesn’t it?
There are innumerable ways to pitch in to strengthen, preserve and even save America. I urge you to use What You Can Do For Your Country as a “To-Do” list for America. Check off each one as you’ve done it. Issue a lighthearted challenge to others to see who can perform the most acts of citizenship on the list. Or create your own list.
Here’s a quick-starter kit for those striving to be sovereign:
- Take good care of yourself
- Know what you believe
- Be willing to change your beliefs
- Know how our system works
- Keep up on the news
- Engage each other civilly
- Get involved in civic clubs and projects
- Volunteer for a candidate you believe in, or run yourself
- Don’t follow the herd; think for yourself
- Spread love and kindness, for they are the currency of civilization
Whatever you do, wake up to—or just remind yourself of—the magnificence of this country that has been bequeathed to you. Just look at me. That high school kid who was so blissfully blind to the grandeur around him would one day feel like a backstage groupie while meeting with one of the all-time rock stars of civics.
Next: Here’s an amazing story that will curl your toes and get you ‘properly astonished’ about America.
About the Author
Michael F. Ryan is executive editor of The Heartlander, as well as a longtime newspaper journalist and editorial writer, frequent speaker, and author of the international novel The Last Freedom on Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.
His award-winning work has appeared in newspapers and magazines since the 1980s, as he has made a decades-long study of civic engagement and its decline.
The full YouRule! ebook is available for 99 cents at either BookBaby or Amazon.
