Witnessing truths that rang truer than the Liberty Bell

Over spring break, I was fortunate enough, or perhaps misfortunate enough, to visit… Over spring break, I was fortunate enough, or perhaps misfortunate enough, to visit Philadelphia. Though the Flyers suck, the Eagles can’t win a big game, and the Phillies find themselves watching baseball’s postseason on the couch just like the Pirates, despite having a better team, modern Philadelphia has one thing going for it — the treasure of our nation’s history While it can be claimed rightfully that Philadelphia owes that one good thing to historic accident, it still is a good thing, and it was enough to make the trip rewarding.

In a complex world, events that define the current global conflict and seemingly need no context — like September 11, 2001, the war in Iraq and now the devastating March 11 attacks on commuter-train passengers in Madrid, Spain — were given context. In the old Pennsylvania Statehouse — a building that once dominated the Philly skyline, now dwarfed by modern civilization — where our nation’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were drafted, much became clear.

Though the words of both documents are powerful as text alone, there is something special, almost magical, about encountering the physical history underlying them. Hallowed words become even more hallowed when on hallowed ground.

The universality and forcefulness of the rhetoric of our founding documents rang truer than the Liberty Bell did before she cracked for good. “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights …” “We the People … “

That the same men who decided they would rather hang together than “surely hang separately” in signing the Declaration of Independence were able to return to Independence Hall and draft our Constitution is both striking and awe-inspiring.

But where can this experience take me, other than an overly dramatic civics lecture?

That’s what I wondered as I entered the National Constitution Center, a state-of-the-art facility that truly captures our Constitution for the marvel that it is. It embeds the Constitution in history, showing its stable and lasting nature, while simultaneously demonstrating how the Constitution is a living document, both through amendment and interpretation. America’s greatest philosopher, John Dewey, remarked that life is a mixture of the “precarious and the stable.” Our Constitution confirms what Dewey philosophized.

Amidst all the raw emotion and overwhelming experiences, I realized that what I was encountering was a larger sense of history. This trip raised my awareness of our nation’s history to a level it’s never been at before — and if that happened for me, I’m sure it would for countless Americans just like me.

With this realization, I could start putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Events like September 11, 2001, and the tragedy in Madrid, made a lot more sense now than before. History, not the nightly news or talking pundits, provides the best context in which to see these issues.

This is what I saw.

With respect to the war on terror and especially in light of the recent massacre in Spain, I couldn’t shake the words of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us … that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

These words, a more than fitting tribute for the dead at Gettysburg, the dead of September 11, 2001, and now the dead of Madrid, must be acted upon. Like the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s words ring universally as a moral that cannot be equivocated or argued with. There is little doubt that, in the war on terror, the terrorist enemy wishes to eradicate democratic government from the earth. Our battle must not only be to ensure that such a government doesn’t “perish from the earth” as Lincoln put it, but to do our best to extend the liberty of democratic government to the oppressed of the earth.

If I may slightly refashion Lincoln’s words for today’s world, it would be to make them read: “That government of the people, by the people, for the people shall flourish and spread upon the earth.”

“We the People” have a voice much louder than we did when the Constitution was written. It is time for us to raise that voice in unity with the victims, their families and the citizens of Spain. It is also a time we cannot forget September 11, 2001 — or our own history in this pivotal election year. If “We the People” renew our understanding of, and commitment to, the universal values that guided this nation’s founding, we would find a unique opportunity.

We would find the opportunity to allow President Bush to reclaim the mantle of Lincoln for the Republican Party and restore to America a moral authority that is embodied in our founding documents and that died with Lincoln at Ford’s theater.

History must live in more than Philadelphia.

E-mail Jason Lawrence at jrl4@pitt.edu.