16 December 2008
As a Nation
This article is excerpted from the IIP publication Sketchbook USA, a richly illustrated volume that depicts Americans at work, at play, in their communities, and engaging in civic life. View and download the fully formatted Sketchbook.
The United States has the third largest land mass of any nation in the world.
The U.S. population is also the third largest in the world.
The United States economy is the largest in the world.
These are a few random facts about the United States in the early years of the 21st century. They form a sketch of what the country has become 400 years after the first Europeans came to the New World and the dream of a new kind of nation was born.
In 1776 — about 160 years after the first permanent settlement by the English — that dream took form in the Declaration of Independence from British rule. A revolution followed and the United States of America was created.
The declaration envisioned a nation where government serves the people and honors the rights of the individual. The intent to build a nation on those principles has come to be known as the American experiment. Over the centuries, the U.S. government and its citizens have been the subjects, the observers, and the masterminds in this experiment. Thousands of times — in statehouses, legislative chambers, and courtrooms across the nation — Americans have debated laws and government actions to ascertain how each adheres to the ideals of their experiment, the legacy of a handful of men, now long dead, but who once shared a vision of democracy.
Those leaders, who came to be known as the Founding Fathers, were all white men. They all spoke English and were educated landowners. In the first years of the new nation, only those who looked liked them were granted a voice in government. As generations passed, more and more, immigrants have come to the United States from all corners of the globe. They have fled war, deprivation, discrimination, and despair, pursuing a dream of a new life under these ideals.
A new mix of Americans — women and people of different colors and ethnicities — waged difficult and sometimes bloody struggles to assert their rights to a voice and a vote in government. They won. American government in the 21st century includes representatives of all races, genders, and ethnic backgrounds. A body of beliefs about the person, the family, the community, and the social fabric largely binds Americans of different backgrounds together with respect and tolerance. But the roots of the past run deep, and Americans still work to expel traces of racial, ethnic, and gender bias.
The American experiment is constantly evolving, as groups or individuals find reason to challenge laws and policies, claiming an infringement of the rights granted to them by the U.S. Constitution. That is their right, granted by that very document. The ground rules of the experiment hold that citizens can challenge and reshape their government, that they have access to the courts to pursue a complaint.
Collectively, the dreams of these citizens continue to renew the American experiment, now in its third century. As each new generation confronts new problems and controversies, the American experiment in the new millennium will enter a different phase and will be tested by the challenges of the times.
