This election year it's clear where John Kerry, for one, stands. He promises to take his hat in hand and walk back to the United Nations. Under his leadership, national security will again be treated as a law enforcement matter and schools will likely be left to be run by the teacher unions. The question remains, will America choose his complacency over Mr. Bush's vision?
'That This Nation Shall Not Perish'
What Bush learned from Lincoln.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Tuesday, February 17, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
WASHINGTON--The third Monday in February is the day set aside to honor our great presidents. And accordingly thousands of tourists made their way to this city over the weekend. Visiting the Lincoln Memorial, I saw many of them climb the steps and study the massive statue of the 16th president before reading the "Gettysburg Address" inscribed on the south wall. Many also stopped to gaze out from the spot from which Martin Luther King Jr. stood to deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech.
This wasn't simply a momentary pause for history, an empty exercise of genuflecting. Sept. 11 awoke a new sense of patriotism in America and President's Day is a chance to reconnect with the ideas and the past struggles of this nation. And at the beginning of this election year it is also a chance to get above the minutia and mudslinging of a presidential campaign and reflect on the qualities that helped past leaders triumph in office. It's fitting then that in addition to the books on Lincoln and other presidents inside the memorial's store, visitors can buy a book on Sept. 11 "A Day of Tragedy."
Terrorism is, of course, the big issue now facing America. That's not to say George W. Bush is of the stature of a Lincoln or even that the war on terror is as serious of an issue as the dissolution of the union. Today's war isn't even as divisive as the Vietnam War had become by the late 1960s. Fighting terrorism, however, is increasingly dividing this country--and not always along party lines. There are two distinctive camps developing. One comprised of Americans who don't think the war is something that should touch their everyday lives. And another that sees combating terrorism as a fundamental struggle not just between good and evil but also over the soul of this nation--a struggle over who we are, as a people, and what we will tolerate on the world stage.
This is where presidential leadership is crucial. America is now at a crossroads. In one direction is complacency, a return of the mindset the nation was in before 9/11. It is here that staying within the consensus of "world opinion" is valued above acting on moral principles. It is here that, we are told, the ethos of the "everything goes" culture must not change. Schools and other civic institutions need more money, but shouldn't come in for fundamental reform.
In the other direction lies a wholly different mindset. Here Sept. 11 is still seen as a turning point not only for foreign policy, but culturally as well. That day marked the coming of an era where America is again confident enough in her ideas of individual liberty to not only encourage their spread abroad (sometimes through forcibly removing dictators) but also to teach them in her schools at home.
This isn't the first time the nation has come upon such a fork in the road. The four presidents that preceded Lincoln--Zachary Taylor, Millard Filmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan--stayed within the political consensus on slavery. They chose complacency and therefore didn't move the country any closer to solving the most pressing moral problem of their day.
President Bush is not making that mistake. He is taking on the most pressing issue of our times with fundamental changes. He's overhauling the Middle East and other incubators of terror. By liberating Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Bush is creating liberal democracies in the Muslim world that will serve as bulwarks of liberty and the first line of defense against terrorism. On the domestic front, Mr. Bush is pushing to change the landscape as well. Citizens who do not have a sense of the goodness of their nation or even of their own history cannot long be counted on to confront the evils of despotism and terrorism.
Teaching civics, raising education standards and shoring up other religious and civic institutions is perhaps the best way to address this domestic problem. So President Bush has his Faith Based Initiative to end decades of discriminating against religious organizations in government contracts and the No Child Left Behind Act to address failing public schools. And at the National Endowment of the Humanities, the administration has developed a "We the People" initiative.
With a relatively small amount of money--about $100 million over three years--the NEH is supporting projects to teach civics and history around the country. Some grants go to creating new curriculums for public school teachers. Others to giving social-studies teachers refresher courses in American history. A grant to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation is making research on early American slavery in the Chesapeake region publicly available.
This isn't necessarily a partisan vision for America. Plenty of members of both parties are in favor of instilling a belief at home and abroad of the fundamental goodness of America, even while recognizing her flaws.
However, the critics--the crowd that prefers that the war be fought out-of-sight and out-of-mind--will always attack President Bush for recognizing terrorism as more than just another foreign-policy issue. They hate him because he brings the ugliness of the war into their living rooms; because he makes them confront the reality of it. He makes them decide what they will do to combat terrorism. Thanks to Mr. Bush, they must take a stand on liberating Iraq, renewing the Patriot Act and dozens of other issues.
This election year it's clear where John Kerry, for one, stands. He promises to take his hat in hand and walk back to the United Nations. Under his leadership, national security will again be treated as a law enforcement matter and schools will likely be left to be run by the teacher unions. The question remains, will America choose his complacency over Mr. Bush's vision?
One thing is certain, with Americans dying abroad for the cause of freedom the war on terror is neither "out of-sight" nor "out-of-mind." At this important crossroads in our nation's history, the hallowed words inscribed on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial are infused with new meaning: "[W]e 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."
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