1 day Ago
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Thomas Paine wrote in the darkening days of December 1776, when the American cause appeared doomed on the battlefield. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Paine wrote those words in his essay “ The American Crisis ,” in an effort to rally Americans in their fight against tyranny.
Now, two and a half centuries later, it’s not hyperbole to say we’re again confronting tyrants on our home soil. Colin Woodard , the author of six books including “Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood,” is director of Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy. He was a Press Herald staff writer from 2012-2022, during which time he won a George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
An authoritarian regime is rapidly consolidating power. Legal residents are being sent to foreign prisons without due process. Entire agencies and programs are being closed and defunded in flagrant violation of the Constitution, imperiling everything from public libraries to public health, including the delivery of weather forecasts, Social Security checks and low-income heating assistance.
Law firms, universities, museums and the state of Maine itself are facing shakedowns, while violent insurrectionists, corporate fraudsters and other criminals are being let out of jail simply because the president likes them. Our government is threatening to occupy some of our closest allies, delighting dictators and turning most of the free world against us. What are we to do? Fact is, authoritarians can be forced to respect our laws, values and Constitution, but only if the citizens stand up for them and the rights and freedoms they protect.
To do that, people have to set aside their lesser, partisan differences and rally in a common cause. But what common cause do Americans still share? That’s what we’ve been working on for the past two years at Nationhood Lab, the research project I founded at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy: to find and develop a broadly held story of common national purpose. After months of historical research, polls and dozens of in-depth interviews with representative Americans, we released our findings last month.
We found that Americans share a broad consensus that the purpose of the United States is to seek to achieve the civic ideals of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration — our “mission statement” as a country — argues that there is a natural right granted to all humans by God or nature to survive, to not be tyrannized, to pursue our happiness as we each understand it, and to take part in determining who represents us and in holding those representatives accountable. And that we’re in a covenant, as Americans, to protect one another’s rights to these things.
To be American, according to this definition of the U.S., is to be committed to these beliefs about the nature of the people and the universe.
These ideals are widely held, our research revealed, to an extent that surprised even me. In our preliminary national baseline poll — completed in late April 2024 — we asked nearly 1,600 Americans if they preferred to define their country by its commitment to civic ideals or by shared ancestry, history, traditions or culture. The results showed that ideals-based definitions of the country were preferred by nearly every demographic category.
Sixty-three percent of respondents aligned with the statement that we are united “not by a shared religion or ancestry or history, but by our shared commitment to a set of American founding ideals: that we all have inherent and equal rights to live, to not be tyrannized, and to pursue happiness as we each understand it.” Only 33% said we are instead united “by shared history, traditions and values and by our fortitude and character as Americans, a people who value hard work, individual responsibility and national loyalty.” In a subsequent poll of more than 2,700 voters, we tested if Americans agree with the argument that we are duty-bound, as Americans, to protect one another’s natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
They did, by an incredible 97-2 margin, one of the widest our pollsters had ever seen. (For context, Americans only agree 80-10 that the Earth isn’t flat, with the rest “unsure.”) We worked to optimize our messaging and tested various alternative languages in additional polls and in interviews with dozens of representative Americans.
(You can find more details from the polls and other work at the project website: nationhoodlab.org .) We worked to optimize our messaging and tested various alternative languages in additional polls and in interviews with dozens of representative Americans (with details available at nationhoodlab.
org). Our final script-speech — if you will — looks like this: We’re a nation defined not by shared bloodlines, religion or history, but by a commitment to a set of ideals, the world-changing propositions about inherent rights of humans set forth in our opening statement as a people, the Declaration of Independence. That every one of us has a set of intrinsic rights given to them by the universe or God or, as the Declaration puts it, Nature’s God: • to survive; • to live safe in their own person, free from domination; • to live the life they choose for themselves; • and to take part in determining who represents us and in holding them accountable.
And that we are, as Americans, in a covenant to defend one another’s natural rights to these things. That’s the American Promise, our mutual pledge to uphold these inalienable rights. And the American Experiment is the effort — despite the despotic track record of human history — to build a nation, a society, a world where that is possible.
We’re a people united by our commitment to uphold and defend this experiment, lest it perish from the Earth. These are the ideals Frederick Douglass fought for in every speech he gave. This is Lincoln at Gettysburg and Martin Luther King Jr.
on the Mall. They’re ideals we’ve spent 250 years struggling to achieve, ideals contested from the outset by those who would make our country something far less, just another nation-state built on blood — tribal kinship, inherited rule, inherited slavery or inherited servitude — where rights are things granted by superiors when they are granted at all. Americans fought a Civil War over them at home and a world war for them abroad and advanced them at Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall.
They’re ideals each generation must fight for and that we fight for today. We reckon with our shortcomings, take pride in our advances, and pledge ourselves to make our Union more perfect. This mini speech isn’t meant for rote repetition, but rather as a source anyone can use to help express our common cause as Americans.
It also provides a guide, based on our most sacred of civic texts, with which to measure if our representatives’ policies and actions are consistent with the American Experiment, or would serve to destroy it. What’s clear from our work is that the vast majority of Americans value our democratic ideals. What they need now is leadership, direction, a sense they’re not alone and that, even in this darkening hour, the light of the American democracy still burns.
We have shared principles and values. It’s time for summer and winter patriots alike to stand up for them. We believe it’s important to offer commenting on certain stories as a benefit to our readers.
At its best, our comments sections can be a productive platform for readers to engage with our journalism, offer thoughts on coverage and issues, and drive conversation in a respectful, solutions-based way. It’s a form of open discourse that can be useful to our community, public officials, journalists and others. Read more.
.. We do not enable comments on everything — exceptions include most crime stories, and coverage involving personal tragedy or sensitive issues that invite personal attacks instead of thoughtful discussion.
For those stories that we do enable discussion, our system may hold up comments pending the approval of a moderator for several reasons, including possible violation of our guidelines. As the Maine Trust’s digital team reviews these comments, we ask for patience. Comments are managed by our staff during regular business hours Monday through Friday and limited hours on Saturday and Sunday.
Comments held for moderation outside of those hours may take longer to approve. By joining the conversation, you are agreeing to our commenting policy and terms of use . More information is found on our FAQs .
You can modify your screen name here . Show less Please sign into your Press Herald account to participate in conversations below. If you do not have an account, you can register or subscribe .
Questions? Please see our FAQs . Your commenting screen name has been updated. Send questions/comments to the editors.
.
