Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got Till it’s goneSo goes a signature line from singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.”
Sometimes we become so accustomed to someone or something—a spouse, a child, good health—that only their absence opens our eyes and our hearts. Catastrophe strikes—a death, a dire illness, a bankruptcy—and only then does the familiar become wonderfully and fearfully precious.
On Dec. 7, 1941, such a catastrophe struck the United States when the forces of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. That attack swiftly upset the routine lives of millions of Americans. Throughout 1942, young men rushed to join the armed forces, vast numbers of women entered the labor force, gas and foodstuffs were rationed, and parents, wives, lovers, and friends wept when news came of loved ones’ deaths.
Benét began his creed by writing, “We believe in the dignity of man and the worth and value of every living soul.”
He then reminded his audience that ours is a free country and that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution “offer the best and most workable framework yet devised for such a government.” He noted our “continuous power of self-remedy” when wrongs occur.
“We believe,” Benét also wrote, “that we have a great and priceless heritage as a nation—not only a heritage of material resources but of liberties, dreams, ideals, ways of going forward.”
Of democracy, he concluded that “because it was established for us by the free-minded and daring, it is our duty now, in danger as in security, to uphold and sustain it with all that we have and are.”
In our own time, many of us have grown so accustomed to our rights and freedom that we blindly take them for granted, as much a part of our birthright as our fingerprints or the color of our eyes. Only recently have more and more people realized that certain elements in our society—big tech and big media, corporations, and even the government itself—have laid siege to our traditional liberties. Although 82 years old, “A Creed for Americans” serves as both a reminder and a summation of who we are as a people.
Implicit in this document as well are messages for us as individuals on how to live. Benét reminded us that we are to treat others as we wish to be treated, that the hungry, for example, should be fed and “the workless” given work. We should be “opposed to class hatred, race hatred, religious hatred, however manifested, by whomever instilled.” If, as he wrote, “every man should have a free and equal chance to develop his own best abilities under a free system of government,” then clearly we as individuals are responsible for making the most of those abilities.
Benét then bluntly advocated for this assumption of self-control, writing, “We believe that political freedom implies and acknowledges personal responsibility.”
Here is the keystone to freedom—responsibility, so often forgotten in today’s culture, in regard not only to our nation or even our community but also to ourselves and our loved ones. If we are in dire straits financially, for instance, before pointing a finger at the broader economy, we should first look to our own deficient habits of spending and saving. If our son is performing poorly in school, before blaming the teacher or the curriculum, we should ask ourselves and him whether he’s hitting the books at home.
Liberty works only when it is harnessed to the management of the self. Benét’s creed applies just as much to us in our present circumstances as it did to our parents and grandparents in those dire days of wartime.
