Summary

On the cusp of a new millennium, are we Americans prepared to accept the imperial burden that history has thrust upon us? Looking back, the author argues that writ large, America, despite its internal flaws and external blunders, has borne its imperial burden with a singular sense of responsibility. America has not sought to dominate other peoples and has treated its former adversaries with compassion. As the preeminent world power, says Lefever, America has an inescapable responsibility. He takes on assorted isolationists, "declinists," multilateralists, and neo-Wilsonian interventionists, all of whom, in his view, fail to recognize the nuances of this responsibility. Despite its flaws, U.S. foreign policy since 1900 has been a force for peace and freedom and it will so continue into the twenty-first century if we remain faithful to the vision of America's founders.

Excerpt

Note: The following essay written by Ernest W. Lefever, founding president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, appeared as Chapter 11 in his book America's Imperial Burden: Is the Past Prologue? (1999, Westview Press).

A SECOND AMERICAN CENTURY?

Be not afraid of greatness.
-William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

The twenty-first century, like all those preceding it, will be assailed by wars, conquest, and tyranny. Predatory rulers will attempt to conquer their neighbors. Some potential victims will fight back. Others will capitulate through cowardice, weakness, or sheer fatigue. Millions will suffer from man's inhumanity. Refugees will have no place to lay their heads and children will starve.

Though the Cold War is over, we will still be living in an inter-war period. All of history has been marked by an endless series of wars interrupted by precarious interludes of peace. The lion will not lie down with the lamb and a brave new world will remain the grand illusion it has always been. Original sin will not be abolished.

Many historians argue that our victory in the Spanish American War in 1898 ushered in the "first American century"--which raises an intriguing question: Will there be a second American century? Certainly America had become a mighty nation well before the First World War. And today, America, like the British Empire at its zenith, is clearly the preeminent global power. But unlike a Britain confident of its imperial mission, we are uncertain about our role in the increasingly complex and demanding world. As we step into a new century, is America living in the final days of Rome or the twilight of the British Empire? Or are we by Divine Providence still a beacon for a more peaceful and humane planet?

Facing a predictably unpredictable future, many Americans are optimistic, others are perplexed, still others are gloomy. Few would share the hubris of Peter F. Drucker who once said "the best way to predict the future is to create it." Or the confidence of some social scientists who believe they can forecast the future by feeding facts and alternative assumptions into a computer. One such is Dean Joseph S. Nye of Harvard's JFK School of Government who has created a nine-cell mathematical matrix called "Visions of Governance in the 21st Century," designed to assess the interplay of national, subnational, and supranational forces with the private sector, governments, and nonprofit groups. Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tocqueville, please step aside.

As we enter a new era, no one can know what America will do or become. Will the Pax Americana that emerged after Pearl Harbor continue to be the chief force for peace and freedom? Will demoralization or world-weariness fatigue consign us to a less honorable role? Will the American idea itself survive?

Lincoln's words in the midst of a wrenching civil war may give us courage. In December 1862, he declared that a united America freed of slavery was "the last best hope of earth." And two decades earlier the ever perceptive Alexis de Tocqueville warned that "if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

For much of our history, most Americans and their leaders have been optimistic about the future. Shortly before Pearl Harbor, Henry Luce declared that Providence had made the twentieth century "the American century." His words took on flesh after Hiroshima when an America at peace was binding up the wounds of war and leading the free world against the onslaught of the Soviet Union. Our imperial role was abruptly assaulted in the adversarial 1960s when angry voices denounced America and spawned a generation who questioned the very foundations of Western civilization.

This assault, spurred by rising hedonism and by disenchantment with our involvement in Vietnam, has produced a spate of doomsayers and what professor Samuel P. Huntington has called "declinists." In one way or another they are heirs to a tradition stretching back to two eighteenth-century men--Edward Gibbon who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who vent his spleen on contemporary society and helped pave the way for the French Revolution.

In 1996, on receiving the Medal of Freedom, Billy Graham declared that "the greatest nation in history stands on the brink of self-destruction." That same year, constitutional scholar Robert H. Bork in Slouching Towards Gomorrah asserted that America was well on the road to nihilism and spiritual chaos, if not on the edge of a new Dark Age.

Focusing less on ideas than on material things, Yale historian Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), concluded that we have reached "imperial overstretch," lacking the economic and military capacity to lead a Pax Americana through the next century. In a different vein, the inconsistent George Kennan has repeatedly asked if a demoralized America is worth defending. A cynical Gore Vidal doubts--but almost seems to hope--that the American empire can survive without a convenient Soviet enemy to rail against.

Numbered among the declinists is Patrick J. Buchanan who now calls himself a "nationalist." In 1994, he wrote: "The West is receding as a world force; it has been receding since the great bloodbath of 1914-1918. And, now, the American Century is almost over. Nor need we be morose at the prospect. No nation is less threatened in this new world than America, none better positioned to prosper and grow great." And yet, the subtitle of his 1998 book, The Great Betrayal, reads "American sovereignty and social justice are being sacrificed to the gods of the global economy." Buchanan advocates high tariffs, opposes free trade, and denies denying that commercial intercourse over the centuries has helped to enrich, civilize, or tame the participating states.

The Last Days of Rome?

This brings us to the basic question--what causes the rise and fall of empires? Virtually all empires have emerged from political and military conflicts culminating in a victorious and dominant state. In both ancient and modern times, the more tyrannical empires have been hammered together by a charismatic, astute, and power hungry political-military leader with a messianic mission. To enhance his wealth, prestige, and place in history, he orders his legions to conquer weaker states and peoples. The relatively benign and paternalistic empires, such as Rome and Britain, have at times embraced elements of brutality. And the overwhelmingly evil ones, like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, have done some good, or they could not have survived as long as they did.

Ancient Rome, like ancient Egypt and most past empires, declined and fell for two fundamental reasons--external challenges and internal decadence or loss of will. Rome finally capitulated to military conquests mounted from neighboring forces or conquered territories. Its emperors characterized their external enemies as barbarians. Rome was also assailed by internal, but less obvious, barbarians--lethal palace conspirators, a debauched elite, hostile class conflict, and widespread corruption. Together they spelled doom for Pax Romana.

The British Empire was also set upon by external and internal pressures, but of a quite different sort. Except for the intrepid Americans, Britain never faced serious military rebellion from its colonies. The "decolonization" of its vast empire in the twentieth century was essentially peaceful. Indeed, it was encouraged by Britain's own democratic ethos and respect for self-determination. Further, a Britain weakened by two world wars was urged by Americans and others to grant independence to its far-flug colonies. Confronted by a combination of economic, military, and moral forces, Britain, despite Churchill's brave words during Word War II, first lost its will and then its capacity to govern beyond its own borders. With rare dignity and self-restraint, it settled for a commonwealth of former British territories with the steadfast support of its erstwhile colony in the New World.

In many respects, America is the political, military, and moral heir to the best of Rome and Britain. Like them, we are assailed by external challenges and internal pressures that throw into question our capacity and willingness to bear the burden of an imperial power. For us that burden does not involve conquest or vainglory, but a commitment to work for greater peace and freedom in a conflicted world. Anything less would not be worth contemplating for a second American century.

To continue as leader of the free world and the principal guarantor of strategic stability--our two chief imperial roles--will require discipline and resolve. We will have to shift our weight from time to time to keep the great powers in balance. This means deterring or offsetting any moves by dissatisfied powers to aggrandize their position and impose regional hegemony. The most likely challengers in the near term are China and Russia, each having a strategic nuclear capability. In a 1996 communiqué, their leaders suggested joint action to curb American's "hegemonistic tendencies." Farther down the line, decades after American troops leave their soil, Germany and Japan--each capable of quickly becoming a nuclear power--may once again emerge as hegomonic pretenders that need to be stopped. America with its allies stopped them in World War II and in a sustained Cold War struggle rolled back the Soviet Empire.

But America cannot continue playing this crucial role without a military establishment second to none. For Americans, "Join the Army and see the world," is more than a slogan. To remain preeminent, we must have highly motivated forces, global mobility, and constant technological innovation, including refinements in nuclear arms. Such an awesome military capability must rest on a solid, productive, and dynamic economy and a public willingness to foot the bill.

This requires a political leadership able to articulate a strategic doctrine that distinguishes between vital and less than vital threats, and a commander in chief with the courage to wage war when necessary. If we are strong and ready, we will be less likely to be forced to fight. Short of war, the president must use all weapons in the military, economic, and diplomatic arsenal to bolster allies and deter enemies. Do we have the right stuff--material and spiritual--to bear this awesome burden, to continue leading the struggle for greater peace in a fallen but expectant world?

America's Weaknesses

America today is afflicted by a variety of troubling political, cultural, and spiritual maladies. The American idea and experience are under siege by multicultural advocates, historical revisionists, and outright nihilists whose views have abetted the decline of the American family, public education, and popular culture.

Historian Daniel J. Boorstin has called the countercultural 1960s "the new barbarism" that threatens the survival of the nation and its future as a world leader. Robert Bork sees an America in a protracted cultural war--with our traditional virtues, morals, and institutions under assault from these barbarians and their allies. He lays much of the blame on "modern liberalism" which he regards as a pernicious worldview rooted in the Enlightenment's emphasis on unaided reason and the French Revolution's demand for "radical egalitarianism." This, along with a "rampant individualism" that makes everyone his own judge of right and wrong, has eroded the social obligations and restraints essential to a good society. But, as Richard John Neuhaus points out, Pope John Paul II, has acknowledged the liberal contribution to understanding "the dignity of the individual and...individual freedom."

In Bork's view, America's politically correct academics, clergy, journalists, entertainers, and major foundation staffs have captured the culture and are polluting it with permissiveness, sloth, illegitimacy, smut, and crime. In 1993, William J. Bennett compiled a list of moral and cultural indicators--from crime and illicit drug use to low test scores and illegitimacy--to document America's decline since the 1950s. The list is lengthy and ominous.

The American idea has also been denigrated by "multiculturalists" who reverse E pluribus unum and sponsor a destructive tribalism that divides Americans into victims and victimizers. Those who fail to achieve equal rewards are regarded as innocent casualties deserving state support or preference. And their attack on "dead white European males" attempts to marginalize Western culture. Some even assert that America is the product of a "convergence" of three cultures, Meso-American, West African, and European rather than of Western civilization. Historians and other scholars who should be repudiating such nonsense are too often cowered into silence or even apology. Two decades ago Malcolm Muggeridge saw it coming: "It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Western man, wearied of the struggle, has decided to abolish himself."

Add to this the "postmodernists," such as Richard Rorty, who assert that there is no fixed principle, truth, or reality. Revisionists, such as William Appleman Williams, Richard J. Barnet, and Gar Alperovitz, who have asserted a moral equivalence between the USSR and America, blamed the West for the Cold War. Then there are isolationists who close their eyes to our imperial responsibilities and the doctrinaire multilateralists who would shift them to the United Nations.

With these conflicting voices, America needs courageous political leaders who are grounded to our basic values. Today, such leaders seem to be in short supply. Perhaps they always are. The Second Coming written by W. E. Yeats in 1921--in another era of cynicism--speaks to the present:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

If these pregnant forebodings come to term, America--as the Founders conceived it and as virtually all Americans want it to remain--would no longer be a haven for the oppressed who dream to breathe free, nor a city on a hill for the world to emulate. Such an America would forfeit its moral and political leadership. It would neither recognize its imperial burden nor have the strength to shoulder it.

America's Strengths

Fortunately, America is not as corrupt as the doomsayers say, nor as evil as the cynics assert. Despite our past mistakes and current troubles, we as a people are far from being finished. The American idea is still very much alive from sea to shining sea.

Continued fidelity to the American idea is our greatest strength. Our sense of justice and robust democratic ways have enabled us to free the slaves and to save the union. Our pioneering spirit and dynamism conquered a continent and made the crucial difference in two world wars. These practical virtues that augur well for the future, were celebrated by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835. Pointing to America's "unbounded imagination," he called it a land of wonders where "everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement."

[Why, we might ask, has American, even before its founding, been marked by a singular dynamism and vitality? More broadly, why are some civilization vigorous and creative and others lethargic or unimaginative? There are many theories: Dynamism, vigor, and creativity have been attributed to climate, territory, conflict with other peoples, or other "accidents" of geography or history. All these elements doubtless played a role in America's remarkable past and present. But abundant evidence suggests that the major forces have been the less tangible intellectual and spiritual qualities that the colonists brought with them to this continent. They are also other forces--the Judeo-Christian moral tradition. the Greek and Roman sense of history, British parliamentary democracy, and the Calvinist work ethic. All this, plus the challenge of the frontier, helped make America the most democratic and dynamic society in history.]

It is precisely this dynamism, so evident to foreign visitors past and present, that is slighted in Paul Kennedy's dire 1987 projection of America's future. He concluded that we lack the economic, and hence, military capacity to exercise global influence through the next century. To buttress his case, he produced mountains of quantifiable statistics, but overlooked or underestimated the intangible qualities--morale, patriotism, and leadership, and the American idea itself. He said American "power has been declining relatively faster than Russia's," this just four years before the Soviet collapse! This decline, he asserted, would become evident in "the harsh test of war," but this was before Desert Storm.

In his 1993 book, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, Kennedy is even more vague and apocalyptic. He asks whether "today's global society" can cope with "reconciling technological change and economic integration with traditional political structures, national consciousness, social needs, institutional arrangements." He fears that global warming, the suppression of women, environmental degradation, and the growing gap between the rich and poor might require new "transnational and subnational political structures." In sum, Paul Kennedy downgraded the crucial role of the state and the resilience of a free and democratic society over authoritarian states. In contrast, another Kennedy--JFK--in the Dallas address he never delivered, recognized these intangible assets, including our commitment to peace and liberty: "We are by destiny rather than choice the watchmen on the walls of world freedom."

Doomsayers notwithstanding, our vigorous and growing economy with all its problems is still the envy of the world. In 1997 our gross domestic product was $7.17 trillion with a per capita income $27,607. Comparable estimates for four other great powers were: China (1994) $2.81 trillion and $2,500; Japan (1995) $2.68 trillion and $21,300; Germany (1995) $1,45 trillion and $17,900; and Russia (1995) $795 billion and $5,300.

Our technology is still preeminent. American corporations are free to innovate, restructure, and relocate. Despite competition from lower labor costs abroad, America productivity has increased, In its 1998 annual report, the Institute for Management Development in Switzerland ranked the U.S. economy as the world's most competitive, 20 percent above Singapore, its closest competitor. Germany ranked 13 and Japan 17. (Bruce Bartlett, "Competitive Champ," Washington Times, May 4, 1998.)

Weighed in the Balance

As America faces a new millennium, the handwriting is on the wall--as it has been for all great earthly powers. The moving finger writes and moves on, but only true prophets can decipher its meaning. History is an arena of decision, not the fatalism of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam nor a tale told by an idiot. The future is not foreordained. As long as men and nations can make choices--be they good or evil--history is fascinatingly open. God is sovereign of the nations, not a micromanaging puppeteer.

America is indeed in a cultural war, a conflict between those who regard man as the measure of all things and those who believe that man, though fallen, is made in the image of God--between an arrogant humanism and a transcendent worldview. As a combatant in the trenches of this ideological war for half a century, I am deeply concerned about America's current time of troubles. But in surveying the spiritual battlefield, I find myself near the mid-point between Cassandra and Pollyanna. The barbarians, revisionists, multiculturalists, moral relativists, and cynics have not yet prevailed. The present outlook may be bleak, but it is not hopeless. If it took a thousand years for Rome to rise and fall, America is not yet on the final downward spiral. With the outcome in doubt, I take solace in the playful mood of a limerick written by Oliver Wendell Holmes:

God's plan made a hopeful beginning
But man spoiled his chances by sinning.
We trust that the story
Will end in God's glory,
Though, at present, the other side's winning.

Dire pronouncements on America's immanent fall, like reports of Mark Twain's death, have been greatly exaggerated. Preoccupation with the imperfect present, to say nothing of overstating our flaws, can lead to despair and cynicism. Indeed, such melancholy may be an unconscious escape from the eternal now that binds the past and future in a seamless web of responsibility and community. The gloomy apocalyptics and euphoric utopians have always been wrong. In a real sense, individuals and nations are suspended between heaven and hell in an arena of fear and hope, and hence moral responsibility. Given the human condition, a chastened optimism is essential to a responsible future.

I am sustained in this outlook by my belief in the American idea, by our history as a people, and by serious contemporaries who worry about such things, among them William F. Buckley, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Irving Kristol. And in 1997 George Will said, "It is good to be alive in America at the end of the first--but not the last--American century," adding that this successful nation is "constantly susceptible to melancholy because things are not perfect."

Despite the adversary culture, Kristol says gingerly that on balance he is a "non-declinist," and as a "cheerful pessimist, I'd say that we Americans seem to be declining more slowly, and meeting greater resistance, than the rest of world!" Buckley is even more Delphic; it is "time for sackcloth and ashes. But the Lord might do for America what he did for Nineveh--spare it."

Ironically perhaps some of the most upbeat appraisals of our future come from abroad. British journalist-historian Paul Johnson's 1997 book, A History of the American People, which Henry Kissinger called "a compelling antidote to those who regard the future with pessimism," concludes with these words:

The Americas are above all, a problem-solving people....They will not give up. Full of essential goodwill to each other and to all, confident in their inherent decency and their democratic skills....The great American republican experiment is still the cynosure of the world's eyes. It is still the first, best hope for the human race. Looking back on its past, and forward to its future, the auguries are that it will not disappoint an expectant humanity.

In his vigorous polemic, The Twenty-first Century Will Be American (1996), Brazilian writer Alfredo Valladao argues that America will control the world for the next hundred years; it possesses supreme military power, the most dynamic economy, and a culture with universal appeal. In his view, all comparisons with the latter days of Rome are unfounded and the closest analogy is with Rome's triumph over Carthage.

His appraisal may be over optimistic, but I want to believe that America will remain a cultural, technological, and military colossus with a deep reservoir of respect and goodwill abroad well into the next century. Despite its flaws, America is dynamic and ever-changing under the hammer blows of internal and external forces that corrupt or honor the Founder's dream. This vitality remains a source of hope. America is not falling apart despite an intellectual climate that twists history, denigrates religion, and in the name of diversity stifles free speech while tolerating a flood of mindless violence and loveless sex in the media and popular culture.

Robert Bork, though not a traditional religious believer, acknowledges the bond between faith, ethics, and society. Like T. S. Eliot, he holds that secular Americans who embody personal and civic virtue live off the moral capital provided by religion. He concludes that a "Western society in which Christianity has been dominant cannot retain its virtue when religion has lapsed." Despite his pessimism, he sees much in America is good and healthy and says the pendulum is beginning to swing back: "Americans are becoming restless under the tyrannies of egalitarianism and sick of the hedonistic individualism that has brought us to the suburbs of Gomorrah." And apparently most middle Americans have never surrendered their adherence to traditional virtues.

To secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity and to shoulder our imperial burden, we Americans must recapture the vision of our almost miraculous beginning. Reaffirming the American idea rooted in the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, we must never cease to mend our flaws.

The obstacles to this renewal do not lie primarily with mainstream Americans, but with the cultural elite. At the very least, alienated academics, journalists, artists, and entertainers should acknowledge the historical facts. America's Founders believed that justice and liberty were the birthright of all men. They also affirmed the sovereignty of God and saw our world as part of the endlessly awesome mystery of creation.

The renewal of our heritage will depend on the emergence of national leaders with the vision that inspired the men in Philadelphia and the courage to forge it into humane policies. An age-old question: do great leaders create history, or does history create great leaders? I suppose both. Today's world calls for greatness, but where on America's horizon can we see a Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, or Teddy Roosevelt? Perhaps only on Mount Rushmore.

Imperial Temptations

In 1961, the year the Berlin Wall went up, I wrote: "America, the most powerful imperial power in history, is without a philosophy or strategy for exercising its imperial responsibility. This could spell our doom!" Now, with Vietnam, the Cold War, and Desert Storm behind us, we should be in a better position to define the dimensions and assess the costs of our task. We face two inseparable challenges--how to survive with the American idea intact and how to use our might without imperiling our soul.

As I read the handwriting on the wall, the forces of renewal will prevail if our leaders draw upon the untapped vitality and faith of the American people. I believe that America can perform its imperial task without hubris. This requires courage and self-confidence chastened by humility. We are captives of our virtues and our flaws. But we dare not become prisoners of our imperfections. And as Arthur Koestler and Reinhold Niebuhr have emphasized, we need not be blameless at home to act courageously abroad.

The hundreds of millions who look to America for protection and leadership will be more understanding and responsive if we acknowledge, but don't exaggerate, our blemishes. The arrogance of American power may be a lesser temptation than the abdication of American power. Power can and often does corrupt. But power chastened by a sense of duty and a recognition of its limits can ennoble. With justifiable pride in our past exercise of power abroad, we have a good chance of staying on course well into the next century. But however well we may do, it would be pretentious to call it "the American Century."

Tocqueville said that a great democratic nation must have a mission larger than its own safety and prosperity, but warned against crusading zeal. Most Americans today reject both crusaders and isolationists and support principled policies rooted in our national interests and a decent respect for the rights of others. Despite grumbling about foreign obligations and high taxes, they instinctively understand what many foreigners know. Irish historian Connor Cruise O'Brien, for one, put it starkly: "The future of democracy on the planet is dependent on the survival of American democracy." And in 1989, I saw the same appeal scrawled on a wall near the Lithuanian Parliament: "America, Save Our Independence!"

Despite vociferous anti-American voices, millions abroad would concur with French philosopher André Malraux, who in 1966 praised America for its humility and its contribution to "Atlantic civilization" and "freedom of the mind." As Pericles admonished four centuries before Christ, "Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it." In 1997, British journalist and historian Paul Johnson characterized the American people as "strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed, but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched."

America is still a blessed land and a beacon to the world. Lincoln once said that no man is good enough nor wise enough to be president of the United States, but someone has to be. Likewise, no nation is good enough nor wise enough to lead the free world into the next century, but we have no honorable escape. He who has much given to him will have much required of him.

After the Fall: A Postscript

Even if America is now living in its golden age and has no peer in the arts of war or peace, its singular preeminence will not last. And even if we remain the mightiest earthly power for a hundred years or more, in the fullness of time our imperial spear and scepter will pass to others. It is not given for any nation to be permanently on top. Our decline and fall are inevitable. In some distant day, the vaunted visible achievements of our culture will be reduced to something resembling the dust and rubble of ancient empires.

When this happens--whether after a long period of decline, a new Dark Age, or a series of wars--what will we leave behind? How will we be remembered? What monuments and artifacts will most intrigue future anthropologists? Absent a catastrophic nuclear holocaust--which seems highly improbable--we are not likely to vanish like Ninevah and Tyre. We can assume that future historians will learn far more about us than we have been able to learn about ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome--mainly because of our capacity to store and retrieve information. At their zenith, each of these dynamic empires was technically superior to its contemporaries and proficient in the arts of government and military conquest.

Egypt is remembered for its pyramids, other monuments of engineering genius, and its belief in life after death.

Greece is remembered for the Parthenon, other magnificent works of art and architecture, the library at Alexandria, Aristotle, Plato, Pericles, and Alexander the Great.

Rome is remembered for the Coliseum, Forum, aqueducts, administrative genius, the Latin language, and rule of law.

How will America be remembered in the year 3000 or 4000? Will we leave behind only remnants of the Grand Coulee Dam, the Empire State Building, the Alaska Pipe Line, and the Pentagon? Will we be remembered for unleashing of the atom, landing a man on the moon, or spectacular advances in medicine and computers? Perhaps all these. But I hope we will be honored most for the American idea enshrined in these immortal words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
-Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
-Preamble to the Constitution, September 17, 1787

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.
-Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg, November 19, 1863