There’s a reason that Americans regard the the Constitution as “as a quasi-religious document”. As G. K. Chesterton pointed out astutely a century ago, the United States is a country founded on a creed. We do not have a lengthy common history or blood ties or other forms of national identity to bind us together. Our tie is our common belief in the foundational ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and later additions like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or his Second Inaugural.
Can we survive as a nation without that source of national identity? Is existence as a support system for Social Security and Medicare enough? Can the ethnically-based nations of Europe survive without that basis for national identity? We’re now engaged in a massive experiment and may soon find out.
Francis Fukuyama’s book seems like it would be a provocative read!. According to the reviewer, he brings up cogent political science points that seem worthy of consideration when applying them to governance here in this country, such as:
Even though societies and cultures are ever-changing under the influences of growth and advancement, I do believe they tend to have greater longevity and stability when keeping a vigilant, safekeeping eye on earlier established values and principles — like what was sketched out in America’s founding documents. Because, when you drift too much into rationalization, skewing the meaning of Constitutional phrases into a ruling party’s perspective, it weakens the foundational creed that has supported a person’s access to desirable freedoms and personal opportunities, no matter which party’s ideology prevails at a given moment in time. It’s basically keeping the long-term strengths in place during the short term upheavals that constantly ebb and flow through the life span of a country.