At the outset of his first inaugural address as governor of California, Ronald Reagan made the vital observation that “freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.” The beliefs, values, habits, and capacities necessary to sustain a prosperous democratic republic are not some innate feature of human nature, as both the historical record and conditions in much of the modern world affirm. We can never take for granted the need for successive generations to develop those traits anew. How does this happen?
Here, Reagan was mistaken. Freedom “is not ours by way of inheritance,” he continued, rather, “it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.” Empirically, this is untrue. Notwithstanding Thomas Jefferson’s infamous exhortation that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants” and his fear that “god forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion,” most American generations have indeed inherited their citizenship in a free and prosperous country. The American people do not expend their effort building from the same starting point as their predecessors; the charge is to preserve and improve upon what they have inherited.
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