A Dear John Letter

Dear Jonathan,

I am fairly sure that at this point you are the only who bothers to check this blog, since I haven't updated it in more than a month. Thus the title. I just caught up on the last week or so of entries on your blog. Very interesting and well done.

Here is a quick recap of my latest thoughts:

Ava's question of why she needs to know that stuff is an important one. I'm glad you took advantage of the moment. It concerns and saddens me that for so many young people (college students I've met), when they know any of our history at all, it's been "taught" to them in such a way as to dismiss the founders of our country as elite hypocrites whose value choices ("moral failures" would imply an enduring standard to which many of their critics would not subscribe) disqualify them from having anything meaningful to say to us today. Thus a generation - or several, as is more likely the case - has much that is wise, humane, and colorful stolen from it before they are perceptive enough to mentally chew on it and digest it. Here is my thought for Ava: the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is possibly the central idea of what America is all about. To make this idea practical in the governing of a free people, the Constitution was written. To make sure that we stuck to and at last fully lived out this idea, the Civil War was fought. To continue in our mission of spreading this idea, we have fought several wars against tyrants, some of whom wanted to enslave the world to their vicious ideas through a tremendous slaughter. Sometimes we've made mistakes (especially lately) but this has been our mission as a country. Some people don't believe in the principles of the Declaration anymore, and like the Confederate politicians back in the old days, they attack these principles. Right now, we are probably more divided on this issue than at any time since the Civil War. Our mission as a nation - or the question of whether we have one - depends on people like Ava. This is my opinion of why it's important to know this stuff.

Now it's late and I'm too tired to write any more thoughts.