By Star Parker | Black Community News
Speaking invitations like this that Thomas accepts are
few and far between.
Anyone who cares about our country and listens to this
address will wish that he would agree to speak more.
His presentation was a brilliant and profound
articulation of what America is about at its core.
It is what every American needs to hear in these
troublesome and divisive times.
Thomas tells his own story and how his life’s journey led
him to understand what America is about.
He grew up poor near Savannah, Georgia, raised by his
grandparents, under the tutelage of his grandfather, a devout Catholic and
American patriot.
Thomas’ grandfather understood that the injustices of the
country were not about flaws in the country but about flaws in human beings in
living up to ideals handed down to them. What needed to be fixed were the
people — not the nation.
This insight strikes at the heart of the divisions going
on today that are so bitterly dividing us.
But Thomas left his grandfather’s house and went to
college in the midst of the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
was assassinated, and Thomas became filled with bitterness and the sense that
America is an irredeemably flawed, racist nation, which is so much in the
spirit of the times today.
In his own words, “What had given my life meaning and
sense of belonging, that this country was my home, was jettisoned as
old-fashioned and antiquated. … It was easy and convenient to fill that void
with victimhood. … So much of my time focused intently on our racial differences
and grievances, much like today.”
“As I matured,” Thomas continued, “I began to see that
the theories of my young adulthood were destructive and self-defeating…..I had
rejected my country, my birthright as a citizen, and I had nothing to show for
it.”
“The wholesomeness of my childhood had been replaced with
an emptiness, cynicism, and despair. I was faced with the simple fact that
there was no greater truth than what my Nuns and grandparents had taught me. We
are all children of God and rightful heirs to our nation’s legacy of equality.
We had to live up to the obligations of the equal citizenship to which we were
entitled by birth.”
As he continued work in the federal government, Thomas
became “deeply interested in the Declaration of Independence.”
“The Declaration captured what I had been taught to
venerate as a child but had cynically rejected as a young man. All men are
created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”
“As I had rediscovered the God-given principles of the
Declaration and our founding, I eventually returned to the church, which had
been teaching the same truths for millennia.”
Despite the strident voices dividing us today, Thomas
observes “there are many more of us, I think, who feel America is not so
broken, as it is adrift at sea.”
“For whatever it is worth, the Declaration of
Independence has weathered every storm for 245 years. It birthed a great
nation. It abolished the sin of slavery. … While we have failed the ideals of
the Declaration time and again, I know of no time when the ideals have failed
us.”
The Declaration of Independence “establishes a moral
ideal that we as citizens are duty-bound to uphold and sustain. We may fall
short, but our imperfection does not relieve us of our obligation.”
Thomas’ message about the Declaration may be summarized:
There are eternal truths; they are true for all of humanity; and it is the
personal responsibility of each individual to live up to them.
Thomas’ detractors are those who reject these premises.
This defines the culture war that so deeply and dangerously divides America
today.
______________
Star Parker is the founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and author of “Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump Inflames the Culture War and Why This is Good News for America.” She hosts a weekly show called “Cure America with Star Parker.”
https://blackcommunitynews.com/star-parker-clarence-thomas-and-the-declaration-of-independence/
