This is a 'coming of age' moment for American democracy. We've never faced such a fundamental a challenge to the basic dispensation. This generation of Americans has the burden of affirming, and defending, things that our parents and grandparents never imagined wd be challenged.+
My grandfather (born on a Missouri farm in 1895) fought in WWI and raised a family in the teeth of the Depression (a school teacher in Toledo, he was paid in city scrip, useable only at city-owned stores, b/c the city was bust and couldn't pay cash salaries).
The Depression tested the nation's soul and birthed a government that, in countless ways, was the salvation of working people like my grandparents. Government was a savior, not an oppressor.
My father fought in WWII, and served the government thereafter for nearly 40 years, helping to build the international order from which the U.S. has been the chief beneficiary.
At no point in the trajectory of those two previous generations was there any doubt about the sturdiness of our Constitutional system or about the basic beliefs that bind our 'credal' nation together.
I summarize this history to re-emphasize that our generation of Americans faces a unique challenge. It is conventionally said that, w/ WWI, we 'came of age' as a nation on the international stage. But that 'coming of age' is different than the one we face now.
Our current 'coming of age' involves our grasp on the fundamentals of our democracy, which faces an existential threat. We've taken too much for granted, for too long. Dark, anti-democratic things *can* happen here. We know it now.
In meeting, and defeating, this unexpected, internal threat, we will seize hold of our democracy in a way that our immediate forefathers never had to. We'll be wiser. We'll take nothing for granted. This moment is about the re-birth of the 'American idea.'
