As I was finishing this book, Ted Stevens, America’s longest-serving Republican senator, died in a plane crash in his beloved state of Alaska. Ted was always a warrior. He had survived combat flight missions in World War II. He was one of two survivors of a 1978 plane crash in Anchorage that killed his first wife, Ann. He battled prostate cancer and won. But by the time he died at age eighty-six, he had done much more than simply fight. He had succeeded. He had built a career serving the people of Alaska. In the process, he was instrumental in helping build the forty-ninth state—from the day he began, when we were only a territory, to the day he died, some fifty-one years after we joined the Union.
Sitting in a pew at his memorial service, I remembered a day from two years earlier, a sunny Saturday afternoon when I shared lunch with Ted at my kitchen table in Wasilla and discussed with him our mutual passion for developing Alaska’s natural resources. Sometimes Ted and I had healthy disagreements over political angles, but more often he encouraged me in my public life. That day, he brought me a U.S. Senate coaster, which he had signed and inscribed with the encouraging words “Keep up what you are doing!” I knew then, as I know today, that his heart was always with the people of the last frontier. Ted Stevens spent his life in a worthy cause and inspired others to do the same.
Ted’s death got me thinking about how much both Alaska and the country at large have changed since he began his distinguished political career. Alaska has come a long way from the virtual American colony it used to be—railing against a distant and all-encompassing federal government. Alaskans are slowly coming to enjoy the rights and shoulder the responsibilities of full citizenship. We have gained a (still-inadequate) measure of control over our destiny while coming to understand that, over the long term, addictions to Big Oil and Big Government are not in the best interests of our state.
America has changed, too, but in doing so we seem to have come full circle. In 1968, when Ted first became Alaska’s senator, America was beset by economic problems at home and by a mortal enemy abroad, the Soviet Union. After a mediocre Carter presidency, which was characterized by a creeping national “malaise,” in the 1980s we had a wondrous period of renewal under Ronald Reagan’s visionary leadership. Thanks to the president’s unfailing belief in our country, our economy recovered and “morning in America” replaced the seeming stagnancy of the preceding years. And because we were once again strong at home, we were also strong abroad. The cold war ended—and Reagan won—without a shot being fired.
Yet here we are, more than forty years later, back where we started, with a crisis of confidence at home and of security abroad. There’s plenty of blame to go around for how we got here. Americans know in their hearts that both political parties are at fault. Both parties contributed to the overspending and government growth that is robbing our children of their future. Worst of all, both parties are part of the Washington culture of entitlement. This is the corrupt mind-set that has members of Congress writing tax laws for the rest of us, but failing to pay their own taxes, and crooked legislators being caught with their fingers in the till, refusing to live by the same laws and standards as the people who pay their salaries. No wonder millions of Americans are up in arms (figuratively, of course), demanding relief from the “change” Barack Obama and the left have thrust upon them against their will.
When President Obama was elected in 2008, some members of the media resurrected the Reagan theme and called it “morning in America” again. Obama was compared to FDR and JFK. And as hard as I campaigned for him not to be president, I shared the feeling of almost desperate hope that many other Americans felt. Like them—like you—I love my country and I want it to succeed. But a new morning in America hasn’t broken over the Capitol dome. We’re not succeeding in Washington. America is losing her way there; losing the sense of herself as an exceptional nation.
The reason, I think, is that we have leaders today in Washington who don’t share this fundamental view of American greatness. I thought of this disconnect recently when I was watching the Blue Angels at the Alaska Air Show at Elmendorf Air Force Base. There I was, brought to tears by the magnificence of these amazing aviators, when my brother, knowing what I was thinking, handed me a note. Scribbled in black Sharpie on the back of his entrance ticket was the message “I’d rather have an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep.”
Various forms of this quote have been attributed to everyone from Alexander the Great to Napoleon, but I knew what my brother meant. There we were, looking at these great lions of the sky, overwhelmed by love of country and appreciation for America’s finest: our men and women in uniform. But who was leading them? And to what end?
We have a president, perhaps for the first time since the founding of our republic, who expresses his belief that America is not the greatest earthly force for good the world has ever known. Now, I know that sounds a little overblown to many educated liberals, a little jingoistic. But so many of us do believe America is that exceptional force for good. America is not a perfect place. We have made mistakes, and allowed some terrible things in our history. Given the sordid historical record of virtually every other country on this planet, however, I think our pride in America is perfectly justified. Yet our current president seems to see nothing uniquely admirable in the American experience. Nothing uniquely admirable about an America that fought two world wars and sought not one inch of territory or one dollar of plunder. Nothing uniquely admirable about an America that laid the foundation for freedom and security in Europe and Asia after World War II. And nothing uniquely admirable about an America that prevailed in the cold war not by military might but, above all, by the truth of our ideas against an evil, inhuman ideology.
The consequences of this average-to-below-average view of our country are profound, both at home and abroad. Indeed, especially abroad. A prominent Czech official has called America’s current foreign policy “enemy-centric,” and I think he’s on to something. An enemy-centric foreign policy is one that seems more interested in coddling adversaries (in Washington, they call this “outreach” or “resetting relations”) and apologizing than in standing up to enemies and sticking by principles—among which are friendship and support for our fellow democracies. The current foreign policy is one that values the opinion of European elites more than the freedom of Iranian democrats. It’s a view of the world in which an Arizona law enforcing federal immigration policy is equated with forced abortions in China. It’s leadership that can crow about fulfilling its promise to withdraw our troops from Iraq without once uttering the word victory.
At home, this president’s rejection of American exceptionalism has translated into a stark lack of faith in the American people. There’s no other way to describe a governing philosophy that won’t trust individual Americans to control their own health care, plan for their own retirement, or even spend their own money. What our current leaders don’t seem to understand is that American greatness—and success abroad—begins at home. It begins with faith and trust in the fundamental goodness, creativity, entrepreneurialism, and generosity of the American people. America is incapable of going abroad in pursuit of anything less than its principles. Yes, we make mistakes, and, no, we are not, nor do we wish to be, the world’s sole policeman, banker, or nanny. But the fact is that we have been a force for good in the world. To deny this, or to seek to ignore or downplay it, is to deny the sacrifice of the thousands upon thousands of patriotic men and women who brought about this good.
Ronald Reagan is remembered for many qualities: his communication skills, his principles, his optimism. But perhaps the single greatest reason we love and admire Reagan is because he loved and admired us. He had boundless faith in the American people because he had boundless faith in the American idea. We are endowed by our Creator with freedom. And we have managed to be, for the most part, the moral and upright people capable of living in freedom that our Founders hoped we would be. We have preserved and expanded our own freedom while extending that gift to other peoples around the world. Reagan paid us the tribute of respecting these undeniable truths, not as some kind of political pose or out of narrow-minded patriotism, but because he understood that it was best for us and, ultimately, for the world to honor what makes us exceptional. Reagan understood what President Obama doesn’t—or at least won’t admit: young Afghan women struggling to go to school in Kabul and students fighting for democracy in Tehran don’t want America to be an ordinary nation any more than we do.
Whenever I give a speech—whenever I’m in a room with more than a few people in it, for that matter—I like to ask everyone to take the time to thank a vet. It is easily one of the most sincere sentiments we can express. The reason, of course, is that Americans are truly, profoundly grateful to our military men and women—not because they have sacrificed for land or power or oil, but because they have fought for, protected, and defended freedom. Our God-given liberty is the exceptional principle at the heart of this exceptional nation. That’s why we are different. It is why we have become a nation composed of all the peoples of the earth, all assimilated in this beautiful melting pot. It is also why we have a special role to play in the world. And if we don’t honor our freedom at home, we can’t expect to see it honored and preserved anywhere else.
We are still, as Reagan said, “the abiding alternative to tyranny.” We are still the shining city on a hill, a beacon for all who seek freedom and prosperity. I’m thankful President Obama understands that our security does depend in part on reaching out in friendship to other nations. But the nation that extends its hand in reconciliation and peace has to know what it believes—and be ready and able to back it up; otherwise that extended hand is just a foolish gesture. It is not in America’s interest—or the interest of the peace-loving nations of the world—to project weakness to terrorists and tyrants.
The world will not be more peaceful if America doesn’t believe in herself and her greatness. It will, instead, become more dangerous and violent. Without this belief, it would be saying to Americans, You’re no city on a hill. You have nothing to offer the world. You’re what we say you are—nothing more, nothing less.
I don’t believe this. More important, I don’t believe my fellow Americans do, either.
The question, going forward, is how? How do we embrace our exceptionalism at home and abroad? How do we take this great awakening among the American people and turn it into a positive force for reclaiming our country and our heritage? Like so many Americans, I have been thinking about this a lot lately.
The answer is closer than many of us realize. We don’t need a manifesto. We don’t need a new party. We just need to honor what our country is and was meant to be. And we need to remember the common sense most of us learned before we went to kindergarten.
If I have to label myself, I would happily slap on a sticker that read “Commonsense Constitutional Conservative.” I am an Alaskan, with the inbred spirit of independence we are so proud of in our state, and I am proud to have been registered in the Republican Party since I was eighteen, because I believe that the planks of our platform are the strongest foundation upon which to build a great nation while protecting our God-given liberties.
Some say we don’t actually have a two-party system, that each party is the party of big government, with a Republican wing that likes wars, deficits, and assaults on civil liberties, and a Democrat wing that likes welfare, taxes, and assaults on commercial laissez-faire. There’s some truth to this idea. While Republicans and Democrats certainly differ on many issues, sometimes the outcome is the same, because in some respects both parties think they know what is best, and will use the coercive power of the state to impose and enforce their agendas.
If Democrats are driving the country toward socialism at a hundred miles per hour, while the Republicans are driving at only fifty, commonsense constitutional conservatives want to turn the car around. We want to get back to the basics that have made this country great—the fundamental values of family, faith, and flag that I have talked about in this book.
The mainstream media and some on the left gleefully tell us there are lunatics and racists in the Tea Party movement who are taking over the right-wing asylum. I think we all understand what motivates this kind of divisive talk. The fact is that Americans of all political persuasions are awakening to two firm sources of unity: our founding Charters of Liberty, and the virtues necessary to live up to them.
Maintaining a healthy republic requires a populace that adheres to those old-fashioned values of hard work, honesty, integrity, thrift, and courage. It is entirely right for us as a society to discuss the best way to foster those values. And after a half century of liberal social experimentation, we know what does this. It’s family (when we talk about limited local government, it means the state knows better than the feds, the city knows better than the state, and the family knows better than the city). It’s faith (be it through religion or the moral values transmitted in our secular culture). And it’s flag (the understanding that we are an exceptional nation with an exceptional message for the world).
This is the firm, hallowed ground on which we all can stand. For me, the idea of unity among commonsense Americans, regardless of their voter registration, is not a difficult concept to grasp. Most of my friends and family members are and always have been independent. Combine my social and familial surroundings with the Alaskan spirit of self-reliance with which I was raised, and commonsense unity sort of comes naturally.
It would be wise for us to use the common foundations of our republic and the virtues that sustain it to find a new way forward. Commonsense constitutional conservatism is about rediscovering our founding ideals and striving to be a nation that does justice to them.
As I look forward to the future, I know that my children, and their children, will live in a state and a country that are in many ways different from the ones in which I grew up. We won’t necessarily share the same experiences. But I hope and pray that we share the same bedrock beliefs.
It is our responsibility to preserve and pass on those beliefs. For there are beliefs that define us as Americans. They are the source of our prosperity, our tolerance, our spirit of innovation, and our greatness. They are carved into our foundation stone. They have been defended by the blood of patriots. We can and should debate what they mean and how they are best preserved. We can and should call each other out when we fall short of our beliefs. We can and should always strive to live up to them. But they are still there, eternally defining and guiding the greatest country in the history of the world. And they are what make the citizens of this great country Americans—not by blood, or race, or creed, but by heart. May we always be so.