Mrs. More and I just had the good fortune of attending a dinner commemorating Flag Day. The speakers were Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dennis Prager--Didymus, eat your heart out. They have markedly different styles, but both delivered fine messages.
The Governor told us of his childhood in Austria, which is where his love for body building and America first began. In fact, he told an amusing story about his mom being worried that a 15-year old Austrian boy had so many pictures of big, oily men and an American flag hanging on his wall. She asked their local doctor: "Shouldn't those be pictures of girls and an Austrian flag?" Apparently not.
As he progressed in the competitions, he was eventually invited to America. As he got off the plane in Miami, he bent down and kissed the ground and said: "I'm home."
That's what got me. How is it that a young man from Austria, who had never been here before, would think of the U.S.A. as "home"? There is really no other place in the world--despite all the naysayers--that people yearn to come to so much. But beyond simply wanting to be here--which might be for simple economic reasons--there is a sense in people everywhere that America is home.
Prager picked this theme up in discussing the "American Trinity." He wondered for years what made America so different from other countries. Why is it a place that people from around the world feel is their home?
He found the answer, of all places, on our coins:
- E Pluribus Unum
- Liberty
- In God We Trust
There is was, the three things that set us apart. "From Many, One" explains the immigrants' longings. It connects to the universal desire for freedom, and draws us together as one people, one nation. Different languages, cultures, and creeds united with a desire for something better and a chance to live life on your own terms.
And that is where Liberty picks up. We are a nation founded on a desire to be free from tyranny, from rulers dictating our position in life and our chance for success. As I've mentioned before, freedom is consistent with God's desire for his people, in the Old and New Testaments. The longing to be free is innate in all men.
This link then gives us "In God We Trust" and "One Nation Under God." We are, at our core, a nation that sees itself under a God, not a government. The government is of us, by us, and for us. But it is not over us. We trust in the Creator as the giver of our rights and liberties, not the government--it is simply to defend them.
This trinity marks the battle lines for contemporary political debate. If we lose to multiculturalism, and become "from many, many", we will have lost a distinctive. If we lose "Liberty" for "Equality," or some other worthy goal, we become like most of Europe. If we lose the belief that we are a nation under and trusting God, secularize, and drive religion from the public square, we lose our true character.
If those three things change, it won't be long before boys in Austria, Bangladesh, or Suriname stop hanging our flag on their bedroom walls. Instead, they will disembark from their plane and think: "Too bad, I've seen this land before--I want to go home."
Thomas More
Moving. Thank you Thomas and AMEN!
p.s. With Mrs. Didymus in town, I'm bummed she didn't get to attend with you.
Posted by: Didymus | June 16, 2006 at 07:44 AM