Given all the noise and bizarre action emanating from Washington since Jan. 20, a look back at key documents from American history may provide some guidance about what our national principles should be.
When faced with a despot, the Founders said, in the Declaration of Independence: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have bound them to another … We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — that to secure these rights, governments are instituted … But when a long train of abuses and usurpations … evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right to throw off such Government.”
Later, when designing the present government of the United States, the framers of the Constitution said, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union … do hereby establish this Constitution.”
Article One, Section One: “All legislative power is hereby vested in a Congress of the United States.”
Section Eight: “The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises … to regulate Commerce with other nations … to provide a uniform Rule of Naturalization … to make Rules for the Government … to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper.”
Article Two, Section One: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States.”
Where is Congress today? When the nation was faced with its historically worst division and Civil War, President Lincoln expressed the need for unity in the Gettysburg Address:
“Four score and seven years ago, our Fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. … It is … for us here to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us … that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, for the people, and by the people, shall not vanish from the earth.”
And from his second inaugural address:
“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained … each looked for an easier triumph. … With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”
In the 20th century, compare the following rhetoric from the first FDR inauguration in 1933 and the Kennedy inauguration in 1961 with recent public statements originating in Washington in 2025.
“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance” (FDR-1933).
“We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom — symbolizing an end as well as a beginning — signifying renewal as well as change. … Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. … To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required … because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. … In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom. … And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country” (JFK 1961).
Compare recent rhetoric about immigrants to the words on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Listening to present anti-immigrant rantings, I hope Lady Liberty is not about to hurl the lamp into New York Harbor, stick out her thumb and hitch a ride back to France.
Brad Cook is a Manchester attorney. The views expressed in this column are his own. He can be reached at bradfordcook01@gmail.com.
