December 19, 2022

America’s success was never predetermined but, at pivotal moments, Americans and their leaders made the right (and always hard) choices. Do we still have such people in America today?

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I was in 6th grade in 1976 during America’s Bicentennial. I played Abraham Lincoln in the school’s celebration, my family parked next to the Pentagon to watch the fireworks above DC, and our class visited the newly opened Air and Space Museum. TV commercials were chock full of patriotic themes from morning until stations signed off with the national anthem. It was a good time to be an American.

Looking back, I lived in a cocoon of security that came with knowing that the world was as it was supposed to be, as if God had our backs. I believed the America I knew was predestined, for it seemed inevitable that our nation would grow from a scrappy upstart in 1776 to the world’s leader in 1976. America was Manifest Destiny writ large.

Later, I discovered this was an illusion. Although 9/11 had given me a glimpse of the wrinkle in the matrix, it wasn’t until I saw Tom Selleck playing Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower in 2004’s Countdown to D-Day that I fully recognized and appreciated that America’s success was not inevitable. It wasn’t until watching that movie that I discovered Eisenhower had written a letter in case D-Day failed.

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That fact was like a brick thrown through the plate glass window of my illusions. The U.S. victory wasn’t, as I’d confidently assumed, preordained—and if the guy in charge of D-Day wasn’t certain of victory, then certainty didn’t exist.

Rather than shaking my confidence in America, that awakening did the opposite. Suddenly America’s success was not the result of robots acting in a play written by God but, rather, the result of the actions of millions of normal Americans doing things, trying things, building things, failing, and then picking themselves up by their bootstraps and returning to the fight….

Image: The successful Republican nominees in 1876.

Sure, there were other factors, such as advances of the 2,000 years of western civilization that preceded 1776, bad decisions on the part of other nations and, of course, good luck and the grace of God. But at the end of the day, in a worldwide competitive marketplace of ideas and ideologies, America had prospered because of her citizens’ efforts and the wisdom of her leaders.

Looked at through that lens, we faced five crucial points when, had things gone just a little differently, the history of the world would have changed.

The first was the fight for independence. In 1776, the British Empire was the largest and most powerful empire the world had ever seen. The sun literally never set on an empire that included Australia, India, a quarter of Africa, half of North America, and the British Isles themselves. Had things gone slightly differently, America as we know it might never have existed. Had the British ruled over the colonies with a tighter fist in the early 18th century, had Washington lost the Battle of Trenton, or had a financially strapped King Louis XVI decided not to support the Americans against the British, the history of the world would likely have been dramatically different.

The second was the Constitution’s creation and our Republic’s launch. Without the three-fifths compromise, the southern states would likely have formed their own country. North America would have grown into a fractured continent like Europe, with all its attendant inefficiency, shifting alliances, and wars. American freedom and prosperity might never have taken root if anti-Federalists hadn’t pushed for a Bill of Rights. If Washington, Adams, or Jefferson had tyrannical tendencies, they could have smothered the new Republic in its bassinet. Had America not emerged as a Republic from the chaos of the late 18th century, the world would likely have been dramatically different.