A large banner showing the U.S. Constitution is held up before the U.S. Capitol building, Friday, Sept. 19, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Mike Pesoli) This year’s 250th anniversary of America’s independence is a good time to reflect on what a miraculous achievement it was for 13 sparsely populated colonies to defeat the British Empire in battle and create a democratic republic at a time when monarchs ruled most of the world.
Even more miraculously, our democratic republic has survived, thrived and grown more inclusive, as voting rights and other rights once granted only to white male property owners expanded to cover all men and women.
Slavery, which deprived my ancestors and millions of other Black Americans of all human rights, was abolished. Many forms of racial, gender and other discrimination were outlawed, although systemic discrimination still stubbornly persists to a lesser degree than in 1776.
None of these achievements came easily. People worked, sacrificed, suffered, protested, fought and died to make America the great nation it is today.
In the closing days of the constitutional convention in 1787, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin if the framers had created a republic or a monarchy.
“A republic, if you can keep it,” Franklin responded.
Think about those six wise words. Franklin understood that keeping America a democratic republic was a far harder task than establishing it. He knew that the rights and freedoms that many of us take for granted are not guaranteed to continue if we don’t work to preserve them.
On our nation’s 250th anniversary, I keep thinking about Franklin’s words. They are not simply a reminder of where we have been. They give us guidance about where we are going.
None of us will live long enough to know if America will remain a democratic republic 250 years from now. But it’s clear that preserving our democracy for future generations is not a task we can leave to presidents, members of Congress, governors, local officials or the rich and powerful. It is the responsibility of every one of us as American citizens.
This responsibility requires us all to vote in every election to choose the men and women to run government at every level as our public servants, working for our collective interests rather than their personal interests.
It requires accepting election results, even when the candidates we support lose, respecting the rule of law, while working through nonviolent democratic means to change laws we believe are unjust and teaching our children to accept the duties of citizenship.
Americans have always argued and debated about the direction we want our country to take. But when we begin to believe that the people we disagree with are less American and are our enemies, we lose sight of what has always made our country exceptional.
Democracy was never designed to eliminate disagreement. It was designed to give us a way to resolve our differences through compromise and at the ballot box, rather than with bullets and bombs. We don’t need a second Civil War.
The Constitution states that it is designed “to form a more perfect Union.” While America hasn’t achieved perfection, it has slowly moved closer to the ideal, thanks to the hard work of Americans from all political parties.
Over the course of my long career in politics, I’ve experienced exhilarating victories and heartbreaking defeats. I’ve seen campaigns and presidential administrations come and go, and political fortunes rise and fall. But through it all, the American people have kept on working hard and working together across political, racial and religious lines to overcome whatever challenges come our way.
I’ve seen neighbors help neighbors after hurricanes, floods, fires and other tragedies. I’ve seen military families sacrifice, teachers inspire, clergy comfort, doctors and nurses heal and young people become activists because they believed they had a responsibility to their communities.
I’ve seen unpaid volunteers working long hours to campaign for candidates they believe will build a better future for us all. I’ve seen other volunteers staffing polling places from early morning to late at night to give their neighbors the chance to vote.
All this keeps America a democratic republic, fulfilling Franklin’s hopes. Franklin and America’s other founders may have envisioned some of these things, but I doubt they could imagine how far our country has come since 1776 in moving closer to the idealistic statement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.”
Despite all the good they accomplished, 41 of the 56 white men who signed the declaration enslaved Black people at some point in their lives, as did 25 of the 55 white men who were delegates to the constitutional convention.
If someone had told them our nation would have a Black male president and a Black female vice president in the 21st century, the founders likely would have considered that unbelievable.
To carry on the work of Franklin and the other founders, we must continue seeking to establish “a more perfect union” and make the unbelievable believable. Working together, struggling to overcome obstacles, seeking cooperation rather than confrontation with our fellow citizens and embracing the idealism of the Declaration of Independence, I believe we are up to the task.
Donna Brazile is a political strategist, a contributor to ABC News and former chair of the Democratic National Committee. She is the author of “Hacks: Inside the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House.”
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