All we need to know about America was spelled out in the Revolutionary War
As I think back to the year 1776, I can’t help but wonder what the Founding Fathers would think of our nation today.They fought to create a country that, in so many ways, should never have been formed, should never have functioned, should never have survived — let alone thrived.Think about how long the odds were: a collection of farmers, shopkeepers, tradesmen and ordinary citizens volunteered to take on the finest fighting force in the world and, after eight grueling years, won.Could they ever have imagined that those 13 desperate colonies would come together, gradually add 37 more states, and become the world’s premier economic and military superpower 250 years later?My sense is they would not be surprised.Here’s why.Anyone willing to pick up a musket and take on a professional army after only weeks of training — leaving family, farms and futures behind — was already displaying the kind of courage that builds nations.Anyone willing to accept payment in a new currency that could easily have become worthless was not simply dreaming of independence.
They were betting everything on it.These Americans were not only dreamers.They were doers.
They were people who expected hard things, accepted hard things and then did hard things anyway.So why would their successors be any different?Yes, beating the British would be hard.But everything about life in early America was hard.
Many had personally chosen to cross an ocean and come to an unsettled land with no guarantee of food, shelter, work, safety or success.They bet on themselves before they ever bet on a nation.They came to a society that demanded self-reliance.
Over time, they built their own institutions, formed their own communities, founded some of the world’s finest schools and cherished the freedom and opportunity that the emerging America offered.None of it was easy.
None of it was assured.But they never asked for guarantees.
They asked only for a chance — the very thing the old world had deni...