Eric Metaxas - If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty

Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

I n the heart of Philadelphia, in a Georgian brick building that still stands, one of the most extraordinary events in the history of the world took place. There, in what is today called Independence Hall, over the course of about one hundred days in the summer of 1787, some of the most brilliant men of that or any other era created what would become the Constitution of a new country. They were creating the legal foundation for a form of government that had never been tried before; and they were creating the possibilityand the golden and glorious promiseof something called the United States of America.

The men in that room were an astounding array of the leading lights of American history. George Washington was there, along with Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Roger Sherman, among others. No one could reasonably debate whether the 4,200-word document they ended up with is one of the greatest documents in the history of the world. If its emergence there was not quite as unprecedented as Athenas parthenogenetic birth from the brow of Zeus, it is close enough to warrant comparison and amazement. The Constitution was a ship of state that the founders launched onto historys ocean that summer the likes of which had never before been seen. The world goggled at it. They also wondered: What would become of this great and strange bark? Would it sail long or soon sink? No one could know. And if it was to succeed and last, precisely how would it do that? How could it, being so very fragile? Why should it float for long? And yet it did. Whatever it was that they created that summer in that building has so grown and flourished in the more than two centuries following that it is simply without equal.

But who could know in 1787 what would spring from the nation made possible by that document created in those one hundred days? No one but God. Today we know that in historical terms, the nation there formed has since soared across the heavens like no other. But in 1787 it still only pointed toward the future, like an arrow in a cocked bow. The potential power in that bow was incalculable. But the promise of the arrows flight had intrigued much of the world. It held great promise in many ways because it was itself a promise to every American, present and future, and to everyone in the world beyond America too.

In his famous I Have a Dream speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence before it constituted a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. It was a promise that was not fulfilled instantly and that was not fulfilled in Kings day and that is not yet fulfilled in ours. At least not in full. It is a promise that is being fulfilled and that must keep on being fulfilled. And we are the ones who must fulfill it, who must keep that promise. But what is required of us to keep that promise and to continue to fulfill it?

What is required of usof each one of us who are we the peopleis something we have mostly forgotten. That is the reason I am writing this book. Benjamin Franklin sums all of this up in the title of this book, as I shall explain in a moment. But the main point is that each of us who call ourselves Americans has a great duty to keep that promiseand if we dont do our duty toward keeping that promise, our nation will soon cease to exist in any real sense. If that sounds overly dramatic, please keep reading.

It is not enough for us merely to exist as a people, doing the minimum of simply obeying our laws and minding our own business. Much more is required of Americans if America is truly to be America. In Dickenss A Christmas Carol, when Marleys ghost confronts Scrooge, Scrooge wonders at Marleys chains. What has his old business partner done to deserve such punishment? But you were always a good man of business, Jacob, Scrooge says. To which Marley gives a forceful response: Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!

Marleys bracing words might well suffice to sum up our situation as a nation. We cannot pretend that its sufficient for us to mind our own business. The founders understood that the republic that came into being in 1787 could not continue long if every American did not make the business of that republic his or her business. They understood that America would not flourish without great help from all Americans. That was the only way it would work and the only way it could work. The government they had given us was something precious and fragile, a newborn babe for whom all of us were obliged to care. The ordered liberties and how they were to work together required a citizenry devoted to keeping them in order, so we were all in it together, else it would not work. So the promise of America in 1787 was a promise to all future Americans, as Dr. King reminds us, as far into the future as we were willing to keep that promise. The possibility of our continuing to keep that promise would vanish if we failed to take our duties seriously. Future Americans depend on present-day Americans doing their duty in this. And theres even more to it than that. Because in the end the promise of this nation was also a promise to the whole world beyond this nation, as we shall see.

The Constitution given to us that 1787 was a sufficient beginning. It was the foundation of the United States of America, but merely existingand merely obeying the laws that stem from that Constitutionwas hardly what the founders had in mind. The idea that our government is we the people is not a corny idea that doesnt mean much. It is something that is utterly real. It is in fact an idea of great genius and is the main operating principle by which this nation has stayed alive and has expanded its freedoms for over two centuries. But once we the people begin to forget that, and cease to do what is necessary as Americans, it all begins to fall apart. And alas and alack, we have gone a long way toward forgetting that and toward ceasing to do what is necessary as Americans. We are in desperate, indeed urgent, need of a primer on these vital things.