On the occasion of the Semiquincentennial anniversary of our free republic, many citizens will recognize and celebrate American Exceptionalism, including our nation’s Founders, its seminal documents, history, and undeniable legacy in advancing the cause of human liberty and self-government throughout the world. It is both appropriate and fitting that all this be done during the “America 250” festivities.

Still, there will also be indictments of all three from our republic’s current left-leaning malcontents, who often appear unaware of the irony and hypocrisy in their positions. The Left seeks to replace the very U.S. Constitution that protects their God-given right to assemble and voice their views.

Further, despite their risible claims to promote “democracy,” the Left instead seeks to replace our free republic’s system of self-government with a centralized, elitist rule advancing a secular, identitarian civic religion of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Such an outcome is decidedly not “progressive.” For despite their mendacious claims to the contrary, this would diminish the sovereignty of the people over their government and restore a “top-down” system of elitist rule that the American Revolution overthrew 250 years ago.

Yet merely intensifying patriotic celebration in response to leftist criticism risks introducing an unwelcome air of hubris and triumphalism. Succumbing to that temptation would, in its own way, also be an affront to the Founders and all who sacrificed across generations to sustain and build 250 years of American Exceptionalism.

Our free republic’s Founders differed from other revolutionaries in this fundamental respect: they understood they were not perfect and that humanity itself is not perfectible. For today’s generation of Americans, whether left or right, to believe they possess all the answers for perfecting humanity or the republic risks undermining, if not outright destroying, our 250-year-old experiment in self-government.

To expand upon President Abraham Lincoln’s analogy of the republic as a house, the foundations of the American nation were laid long ago. Yet our house requires constant maintenance. Thus, every generation of Americans is duty- and honor-bound to remain vigilant in ensuring our shared home remains a “shining city on a hill.” Or, as President Lincoln so eloquently charged us in the Gettysburg Address:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

But during the nation’s 250th birthday party and afterwards, how should we best rededicate ourselves to guarding and ultimately bequeathing American Exceptionalism and its revolutionary experiment in self-government to future generations of sovereign citizens?

The answer is a paradox: to preserve political self-government, one must first practice personal self-government. One cannot have a just, free, and ordered society without first ordering one’s own soul. Consequently, this requires transcending politics and grasping “the permanent things” that endure beyond the political realm.

Recently, a friend sent me a missive decrying the moral state of the nation. In sum, he lamented why so many of our fellow Americans feel compelled to cling to trendy, ephemeral, and often secular creeds and practices. Why is there such an aversion to avoiding the cardinal sins—pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth—and to practicing the cardinal virtues—humility, liberality, chastity, meekness, temperance, brotherly love, and diligence?

If these sins and virtues strike you as quaint, it is because they are largely ignored in the culture at large, often regarded as little more than obstacles or “judgments” meant to inhibit indulging one’s baser instincts with moral impunity. Worse, they are increasingly targeted for erasure through the Left’s promotion of its aforementioned tripartite tenets of the DEI framework.

Yet these cardinal virtues have proven themselves over the millennia to be salutary to human flourishing, just as the opposite vices—or sins—have proven injurious to it. Therefore, amid the Semiquincentennial celebration, we should pause to reflect and rededicate ourselves to eschewing the cardinal sins and instead embracing the cardinal virtues that undergird an ordered soul and the “permanent things” of life—faith, family, and community—which are prerequisites for sustaining our free republic.

Of the permanent things, the first is faith. How, then, should we honor the source of perfection whose providence inspired the self-acknowledged imperfect Founders and succeeding generations of Americans to forge “a more perfect union,” even while recognizing it could never be perfected by imperfect human beings—the Creator who has provided our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and indeed all others besides?

For my part, in humble gratitude and rededication to the past, present, and future of our free republic, I will offer to God a Semiquincentennial psalm (111:10), which forms the basis of the order of the soul, self-government, and our free republic:

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; prudent are all who practice it. His praise endures forever.”

Amen.

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An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003 to 2012. He served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles, a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a cohost of The John Batchelor Show, among sundry media appearances.