Today’s Guest Column
Last week, I went to the premiere of We the People, a new documentary on the legacy of the Constitution. After introductory speeches, the lights dimmed, the film rolled and Morgan Freeman told us how we, the people began a new kind of revolution: a revolution of ideas.
After the screening, I walked with my friend Jake, a budding journalist, around the Washington area. We saw the flag that inspired Frances Scott Key to compose “The Star-Spangled Banner,” passed the Washington Monument encased in scaffolding, the World War II Memorial with ominous iron wreaths and countless half-masted flags mourning our most recent tragedy at the Navy Yard. Finally stopping to take a breath under Lincoln’s shadow, we turned and imagined the scene 50 years ago when Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Of course we all know the following words of the Declaration of Independence: “That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Our nation was founded on ideals. Our nation was forged by a revolution of ideas. But 225 years later, we, the children of that revolution, the posterity our founders dreamed of, seem blind to the implications and applications of our founding legacy.
Jake and I ate our fill at an environmentally sustainable restaurant and passed a woman begging for a dollar. We marveled at the International Monetary Fund headquarters and saw dozens asleep on park benches. We watched a man fish for nickels in the reflecting pool. Our nation’s capital has an unbelievable discrepancy between ideas and reality.
Our leaders have their heads so far in the clouds that they can’t see the plight of those on the ground. We don’t suffer from a lack of moral fiber or noble goals, yet we willingly overlook the plight of our fellow man.
When will idealism become realism? When will we “sing the old words of the Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, we are free at last’”?
King told us it’ll come when we let freedom ring. When we let it ring from every molehill, every nook and cranny and every mountainside.
But if 50 years have shown anything, they’ve shown that we can’t simply “let freedom ring.” We have to ring the bells of freedom.
We can’t simply wait for our leaders or fate. We the people must reach for the rope and ring the bells of freedom.
If your neighbor is one of 16 million American children without enough to eat, if your co-worker sleeps under a bridge, if your roommate’s family lives day to day financially, the cord is in your hand; ring the bells!
Do something — anything. Donate money, donate time, advocate. Even if you’re not helping in the best possible way, help your fellow man. A leaky bucket still carries water to the sick.
It’s about time that we as individuals use our hands to build a better world. It’s time we stop imagining utopia and start creating it.
Our leaders past and present have lauded “change” as the solution to society’s ailments. “Change” based on theoretical ideas and overzealous ideals. Well, the man in the reflecting pool is looking for a different type of change. It’s time we hop in and help him find it.
