Patriots' Week 2023

The American Soul: A Spirit to Rekindle in Our Adult Kids

Happy Patriots’ Week 2023! We send these greetings annually (started as 4th of July cards 35 years ago) between 9/11, Patriot Day, and 9/17, Constitution Day, calling it Patriots’ Week.

We hope you and yours are thriving…and take a few minutes to thank God for the blessing of America, our remarkable Founders, and our selfless countrymen from that horrendous day in 2001.

Please…slow down and stop for a moment. Reflect on the courage needed, risks taken and sacrifices made by our Revolutionary leaders—and say another prayer of thanks for such an amazing gathering of men (and the strong women supporting them). Genuine heroes: Washington…Adams…Jefferson, among many others. Truly, the Divine hand at work.

If you hold any doubt about God’s blessing of America, study the Bible and then our history.

Never forget July 4th—1826. Fifty years since that world-changing day in Philadelphia. Readers of the Old Testament know the 50th year—called the Jubilee Year—holds significance and represents a time to celebrate God’s grace and blessings in the world.

As if to ensure we understood what He had blessed us with, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826…our 50th year! As Senator Daniel Webster said in a ceremony the next month, “On our 50th anniversary, the great day of National Jubilee…while their own names were on our tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits.”

How can you not feel chills? Webster continued, “…their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize…[proof] that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?”

As if to ensure we understood what He had blessed us with, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826…our 50th year! As Senator Daniel Webster said in a ceremony the next month, “On our 50th anniversary, the great day of National Jubilee…while their own names were on our tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits.”

How can you not feel chills? Webster continued, “…their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognize…[proof] that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?”

We have a message to our fellow parents of this misguided generation: it’s disturbing, but to see who went wrong, we need only look in the mirror.

Did we raise our children with a sense of entitlement instead of gratitude? Distain instead of pride? Ignorance instead of knowledge? Sadly, the evidence speaks volumes.

And worse than those who are merely apathetic and unappreciative, is the cadre of self-righteous activists who don’t understand history or how values and norms change and evolve.

We know all members of this age group aren’t lost. Just look at the brave men and women serving in our Armed Forces today, and, we’re proud to say, our own kids. But they’re not off the hook: we must enlist these young patriots to help us teach their peers.

We still hold the sacred obligation to teach our chronologically-adult children our great national story. Ironically, a British subject, a confidant of King Charles, the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, once wrote how Americans understand the importance of telling and re-telling our collective story. But do we still get it? Have we ourselves taken the American Soul for granted?

He compared monuments in America to those in England, and how our memorials tell our story by quoting our great leaders: “…each carries an inscription taken from their words: Jefferson’s ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident…’, Roosevelt’s ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural, ‘With malice toward none; with charity for all…’ Each memorial tells a story. London has no such equivalent…even the memorial to Winston Churchill, whose speeches rivalled Lincoln’s in power, bears only one word: Churchill.”

An Englishman valued our American story…why can’t our kids?

He continued: America is “…not a society of rulers and ruled, but rather one of collective responsibility. Hence the phrase, central to American politics but never used in English politics: ‘We the people.’”

Friends, we, the people, failed. We failed in our responsibilities. We failed our children. We failed to honor our American Soul and the September heroes we remember this week.

Slow down. Stop for a moment. Resolve to right this wrong.

We must enlighten our adult kids with the glow of American freedom and capitalism. We must teach them one of the most important narratives in world history: the fact and the fiction, the inspiring and the disgraceful, the ugly and the beautiful.

We must explain why America is truly exceptional, especially since we’re never done—we’re always trying to “form a more perfect Union.” We must ensure our emerging group of leaders understands where we’ve been…and how we expect them to continue our national story. They’re not too old to learn; we’re not too old to teach.