By Tom Campbell

We celebrate today– the American spirit. We celebrate it on the day of our independence. It is the spirit of Americans, this spirit of our individual independence.

Independence is not isolation, but it does require some self-confidence, and that is not a fault.

Independence is the characteristic to pay no greater respect to the opinions of others than is necessary to consider their advice carefully.

Independence is necessary to act when we perceive a need to act, but to be careful in measuring that need to act by what we consider important, not what others would impose upon us.

Independence is the freedom to commit error, rather than letting the fear of error stymie us from action.

Independence is the sense that no one person, even leaders of our elected government, has the right to take away the independence of another who has not done harm.

These are the American characteristics we celebrate today when we celebrate independence. The historical fact of our freedom from colonial rule, yes-but more importantly, the on-going fact of our independence of spirit as a country and as individuals.

Is it meaningful to speak of an American characteristic, such as independence? How can we hope to sum up a quarter of a billion people, and say: “Here is a virtue they all possess”?

We cannot, of course. But what we can say, is: “Here is a virtue by which we define ourselves, here is a virtue by which we choose to be measured.”

To be an American is to value a spirit of independence whether we each measure up to it each day or not.

Let us speak today of that American spirit.

It does exist. And it is uniquely ours. That is the judgment of a most famous British historian, Paul Johnson, who published his monumental history of the American people in 1997. In its preface, he says:

“I do not acknowledge the existence of hyphenated Americans, or native Americans or any other qualified kind. They are all Americans to me: black, white, red, brown, yellow, thrown together by fate in that swirling maelstrom of history which has produced the most remarkable people the world has ever seen.”

. . .”This book is dedicated to the people of America-strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched.”

I wish to speak to those attributes today.

There is brashness in the American spirit. Our youngest president, Theodore Roosevelt, was asked to speak before the Sorbonne University in Paris in 1909. This university was, at the time, perhaps the greatest university in the world. The academic leaders of Europe were assembled, as the former president, then aged only 51, was on his way to receive the Nobel Prize for peace. His words to the academics, the brilliant minds of Europe, were, basically, that they didn’t matter.

“It is not the critic who counts, the man who observes how the brave man might have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who strives valiantly, who knows the great enthusiasms the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause who, at the best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

We still see signs of this today. We are brash. We take actions in the world without asking for permission. But we will not be still. We will not be passive. Like Theodore Roosevelt, we are anxious to act n considering the greatest criticism that we lost an opportunity rather than that we did wrong when presented with an opportunity.

A strong amount of self-assuredness is part of that characteristic, a confidence that we mean to take nothing from others they will not freely trade, but that we will not brook another taking from us either.

This sentiment is as old as our country. Without a profound belief in the righteousness of our motive, we would never have won independence from the greatest power on earth at the time. Patrick henry concluded his speech on March 23, 1775, in this manner. He was addressing the criticism that it was foolish for Virginia to join in a battle against the strongest military power in the world at the time: the British Empire.

“Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just god who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery . . . It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace! n But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty god! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Righteousness is not self-righteousness. It is in the American character to spend time in self-evaluation, to be sure that the point of view of the other has been considered. No privileged class exists that can shut out the well-formed views of others. In all our history, no better example of this aspect of the American character can be found than Abraham Lincoln.

On March 4, 1855, he looked out over the east front of the capitol, over a crowd that included families almost every one of which had lost a son, a brother, or a father, and he refused to judge.

Words of anger at the south would have been well applauded. Instead, Lincoln said,

“Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same bible, and pray to the same god; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just god’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.”

Americans have gone overseas to fight wars seven times in the last hundred years. Judge what you will about each event, in none will you find a desire for conquest, to take land, to subjugate a people to our will.

In that characteristic, manifest even today while our armed forces stand guard in Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq, America is distinguished from every other power in the history of mankind that stood in the position we hold today: the position of unquestioned military superiority over all other nations. In history, every other civilization in such a position used it to take other countries into subjugation.

This, too, is part of the American spirit. As we prize our independence, we would see others enjoy theirs. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, as I would not be a slave, so I would not be a slave-owner.

But this is rare, unprecedented, in the history of the world. England, France, Germany, Japan, Ottoman Turkey, Rome, Macedonia, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt: each possessing, for a while, the position of absolute military superiority over its neighbors, used it to subject them. America, at the same point now in world history, has no such wish.

Our attitude, rather, has been to question how soon before our soldiers can come home. Some, of course, can never come home, and we must remember them today, too. When president Charles de Gaulle took his country out of NATO, and ordered American troops to leave French soil, the commander of U.S. military operations in Europe asked in quiet voice: “All of them, Mr. President? Even those buried at Omaha Beach?”

Those who we sent overseas to do our country’s work deserve honor, whether we agree with the cause or not. Our freedom gives us the right to question any war; but our spirit denies us the right to criticize the soldier sent to fight it. Tens of thousands of Americans who wanted to come home lie in military cemeteries overseas. Over two thousand went to Vietnam and are still carried on our rolls as missing in action and over eight thousand from Korea. To our friends overseas who question America’s actions, I say, a true friend is allowed to question a policy anytime, but not a motive.

And the same is true for critics here at home. In the wake of the attacks upon America, we have passed laws, and enforced them in ways that occasionally troubled me. I have spoken and written on the danger of surrendering our constitutional liberties, when no foreign force has ever been strong enough to take them from us. I worry about people kept in jail without knowing the evidence against them, and about searches of individuals’ records on nothing better than suspicion. In expressing those concerns, I do not for a moment question the motive of those officers of law enforcement and civil defense who jeopardize their lives every day so that I might enjoy mine. I can question policy; I do not question motive, of a fellow-American.

To these attributes of American independence, I offer one more. No longer serving in public office, I have a certain freedom that, out of respect, not temerity, I did not feel equally able to exercise before. The American characteristic of placing emphasis on being well intentioned does not exist in an isolated state. If we take action in Vietnam, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, if we impose or remove a part of the domestic social agenda, a tax or a subsidy, we can have legitimate debates about each decision. In those debates, always seem to ask not only if our policy is wise, is it likely to have its Intended beneficial effect-but we also seek to assure ourselves that we meant well. Indeed, this attribute can be over-emphasized, for good intentions are not sufficient to avoid doing much harm; but it’s part of the American character to want assurance on this point nonetheless, in every major issue of public policy, domestic or foreign, that we seek to do right.

Policies that lack this element might get started, but they do not persist. And leaders about whom we harbor this suspicion are not long tolerated in office.

The part of this I have not previously emphasized, in public speech when I was in office, is what might motivate such a desire to do what is right. The answer is a recognition of a higher authority to which we are accountable. I put down no one’s religion, and impose mine on no one else, when I observe that it is in the American character to seek to align our country’s aspirations with a greater purpose than humans can precisely discern, but strongly sense nonetheless. Insufficient as our perception may be, we, Americans know there is something else, to which we are called to align ourselves.

We seek the good. We honor Private Milton Olive, who covered a Vietcong grenade with his own body to save his fellow soldiers. We honor him because he knew something about eternity that we strive to know. We honor the student at Columbine who, when asked by the killer if she believed in God, answered yes, and told the killer he needed to get straight with god, knowing in those words she would unleash the killer’s bullets. And he did. We honor as part of the American spirit the one who gives for others, without calculation of how it will help at the next election, without the remotest possibility of personal reward.

It is in the recognition of our connection with something greater that we are able to proclaim our independence from everything lesser.

And that is as true for us as a nation as it is for each of us individually.

With this meaning, let me close my few remarks today, in the hope that I might have brought some additional element to the phrase that I mean with all the spirit I can find in this American heart:

May God protect, enlighten and direct the United States of America. And may God bless our country and its people.