Front and Center Vol-1 No 8 August 2022-Meet our CEO

The Canadian philosopher George Parkin Grant has observed that Canada and the United States are two countries of European origin with no history before the modern period. In the United States, this fact has led to an ongoing debate about when we began as a country. In considering this phenomenon, we should be clear that in any country, ours included, the study of history is not only an important exercise in cultural preservation, it is inevitably political. The politicizing of history was commented upon concisely in a well-known passage from George Orwell’s book 1984 in which one character remarks to another that those who control the past control the future. The story a people tell themselves about their past is a critical element in the health and well-working of a society. A people who celebrate their past and are proud of their country, mindful of mistakes, determined to improve, but proud nonetheless, will generally be happy and well-governed because they have a society they find worthy of protection and preservation.

It is an admirable quality of western societies generally, and particularly of English-speaking societies, that we examine ourselves to see how well we embody the ideals we espouse, and to seek to improve where we are deficient. Among the peoples of the world, this trait is rare. As fine a quality as this is, it can be carried to an extreme in ways that hold the real potential to be destructive rather than constructive. This constrained perception leads one to insist that a single aspect of the origin of a country, or an institution of society, or a religious faith, or a community, defines the entirety of it, for good or ill, and improvement and growth over time are futile – a position sometimes termed an origin fallacy. The history of the United States, however, strongly belies this fallacy due to our complex origins and the demonstrable progress in the continuing struggles to achieve our nation’s founding ideals.

An important aspect of our history concerns when the United States began as a country. Did we emerge in history as a country when the thirteen American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain? Did we come into being with the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union in 1781, with the present Constitution of the United States in 1788-89, or with the meeting of the first Congress under the Constitution? Should we seek our origins much earlier, at Runnymede in England in 1215, for example, where English noblemen compelled King John to acknowledge limits on his power that were grounded in their rights and codified in a constitution known as Magna Carta? This is a conversation Americans should engage in because it is important for the self-understanding of a people to know their origins in history and to talk about it, teach it, and celebrate it. 

What is needed in this country is a revival of appreciation for our history and a wider willingness to celebrate the United States for its many excellent qualities and achievements, and importantly, to recognize the treasure that is citizenship in this country, which so many people around the world long to gain. We can get a good sense of this with only a few examples. To quote the Declaration of Independence: “…let Facts be submitted to a candid World.”

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