Cal Thomas: The American spirit

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Tomorrow kicks off the year-long countdown to America 250—the semiquincentennial of the publication of the Declaration of Independence.

WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says the year ahead is a good opportunity for some national soul-searching.

CAL THOMAS: A question that would be helpful for discussion during our increasingly divided times might be: “What does it mean to be an American”? Is it defined in the lyric of the Lee Greenwood song?

SONG LYRIC: I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free…

That doesn’t fully answer the question of what an American is…or what’s more, what America is.

EDUCATIONAL FILM: Independence Hall in Philadelphia now stands quiet and tranquil…

Students once studied such things before American history was rewritten in many public schools and universities. They learned that the country was named for the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, whose claim to fame was the discovery that the land he was exploring, the New World, was not a part of Asia, but a separate continent.

German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller used Vespucci’s first name, whose Latin version was “Americus,” to label the future United States on his 1507 map. The name “America” was quickly and universally accepted.

That still doesn’t answer the question as to what America is and who are Americans. Frank Sinatra gave this answer in the introduction to his 1965 recording of “The House I Live In.”

SINATRA: Only in America could all that's happened to me, happen to a guy like me, anywhere else I might have wound up digging coal, or making fortune cookies…

That gets closer to answering the questions. America is a land of opportunity for those who can see it and seize it. If you can’t make it here, you are unlikely to do as well anywhere else.

America is also about overcoming obstacles. Rags to riches stories used to inspire people who had a bad start in life…that was before many accepted the false notion that we are entitled to what others own and don’t have to work for it.

America is an idea in a continuing quest for the ideal. When we have failed to live up to the Declaration and our constitutional principles, we don’t give up. We try to make things right because we have a standard – a foundation – that defines what is right.

EDUCATIONAL FILM: We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights…

These truths have helped us overcome the evil scourge of slavery and the denial of civil rights to those who descended from the enslaved.

What other nation offers such opportunities and hope? Freedom is not “just another word for nothing left to lose,” as Janis Joplin sang. But with freedom comes responsibility, including the expectation it will be renewed by each succeeding generation.

Ronald Reagan put it this way in a speech from 1961:

REAGAN: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it, and then hand it to them with the well taught lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in America when men were free.

Let’s have a conversation during these next 365 days about what it means to be an American and what we will do to renew America for the next generation while preserving it for the current ones.

In answer to the questions about America and Americans, it’s hard to improve on the motto inscribed on the Great Seal of the United States – E pluribus unum, “from many, one.”

Let the countdown begin. I’m Cal Thomas.

THE HOUSE I LIVE IN: That’s America, to me…

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.