The Wonderful Story of Washington and the Meaning of His Life for the Youth and Patriotism of America

INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATIONS I. AMERICAN PATRIOTISM AND THE MEANING OF AMERICA “America for Americans” is a patriotic appeal that has arisen in many a political crisis, and then gone to pieces in the confusions of what we mean by “Americans” and “America.” American Liberty has been a goddess of worship from the beginning, and yet we find ourselves in an endless turmoil concerning what we mean by “American liberty.” Washington and his associate patriots wrote a great definition in history and established that definition in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, but human meaning, like the skies, seems hard to get clear and to keep clear. To know clearly what the definition of freedom means and to promote it in the right-minded way, is the patriotism that identifies anyone anywhere as being American. The makers of America loved the right-minded way, and their primary test of justice unfailingly required, as a basis, the personal liberty that has been described to us by all as freedom to do the right that wrongs no one. To these “rights of man,” they gave “the last full measure of devotion,” as Lincoln defined patriotism, for “the birth of a new freedom under God.” The public-school youth, who is not in one way or another familiar with the Americanism of Washington and Lincoln, is not yet prepared either for college or for life, and, still more clearly, is not prepared to be an American. The number of un-Americans in America may, in some crisis, become appalling, if, in fact, they do not succeed in Europeanizing America. Against that possibility there is nothing to save us, if we do not save ourselves as our hereditary task of American patriotism