To Be an American

This is a time to ask, and answer, some basic questions

President Gerald R. Ford speaks during a naturalization ceremony at Monticello in Charlottesville, Va., on July 5, 1976 (Courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum)

In recent years, many of us have been thinking a lot about the American founding. What does it mean to be an American? What does the country stand for? This is a time for fundamental things—for thinking about the basics.

Next year, we will mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. President Trump will preside. In 1926, when the country marked the 150th anniversary, Calvin Coolidge was president. His sesquicentennial speech is a great oration, a splendid meditation on American liberty, and liberty in general.

The Bicentennial, in 1976, I remember quite well. I was twelve. President Ford was in office. The day after the Fourth of July, he presided over a naturalization ceremony in Virginia—at Monticello.

Is there anything more beautiful, more American, than a naturalization ceremony?

Two days ago, former president Bill Clinton presided over one in Little Rock. (To read about this, go here.)

Back to the Bicentennial. Last night, I found myself standing outside the Temple Emanu-El, the grand synagogue in Manhattan, New York. My eyes fell on a little garden, and in particular a slab, with an inscription. Can you read it?

Just in case the picture does not do the job, I will type the words:

This Garden of Freedom is dedicated to the people of the United States in grateful recognition of two hundred years of precious liberty, 1776–1976

(A side-note: As you may recall, Israel’s rescue operation at Entebbe took place on July 4, 1976.)

That summer—the summer of 1976—President Ford was in a big political fight for the Republican presidential nomination. His challenger: California’s Ronald Reagan. On July 8, R. W. Apple Jr.—the legendary Johnny Apple—filed an article for the New York Times:

It would be hard to imagine a greater political windfall for a beleaguered President than the exuberant celebration of the American Bicentennial this week, which gave Gerald R. Ford a priceless opportunity to play the role of national leader rather than that of a candidate scrambling to avoid repudiation by his own party.

Apple continued,

On a once‐in‐a‐lifetime occasion, the central figure was Mr. Ford. At the encampment of the wagon trains at Valley Forge, at the convocation outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, at Operation Sail in New York, and at the naturalization ceremonies at Monticello, it was the President—not Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter—who stood in the spotlight, visible and audible to tens of thousands in person and to uncounted millions on television.

Carter, as you know, would be the Democratic presidential nominee (and would go on to defeat Ford in November), but the Republican nomination was still up in the air.

What Ford said at Monticello, I value. He and his team rose to the occasion. The president spoke fundamental truths, in my opinion. Of course, this is all very controversial today (and maybe controversial always).

Said Ford,

Immigrants came from almost everywhere, singly and in waves. . . . Like the Mayflower Pilgrims and the early Spanish settlers, these new Americans brought with them precious relics of the worlds they left behind—a song, a story, a dance, a tool, a seed, a recipe, the name of a place, the rules of a game, a trick of the trade.

Such transfusions of traditions and cultures, as well as of blood, have made America unique among nations and Americans a new kind of people. There is little the world has that is not native to the United States today.

Isn’t this fundamental? Bedrock? A source of national pride? To some, yes.

More Ford:

The essential fact is that the United States—as a national policy and in the hearts of most Americans—has been willing to absorb anyone from anywhere. We were confident that simply by sharing our American adventure these newcomers would be loyal, law-abiding, productive citizens, and they were.

How could America pull this off?

. . . because we are uniquely a community of values, as distinct from a religious community, a racial community, a geographic community, or an ethnic community. This Nation was founded 200 years ago, not on ancient legends or conquests or physical likeness or language, but on a certain political value which Jefferson’s pen so eloquently expressed.

These are, of course, fightin’ words. A “community of values,” Ford says (and “uniquely” so). Is America an idea? Not an idea? What does “blood” mean in an American context? (In the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump spoke repeatedly of “poisoning the blood of our country.”)

(Recall: The two presidential nominees last year were Trump and Kamala Harris. Three of their four parents were immigrants. The fourth, Trump’s father, was the son of an immigrant.)

More from President Ford, getting to the heart of the matter:

To be an American is to subscribe to those principles which the Declaration of Independence proclaims and the Constitution protects—the political values of self-government, liberty and justice, equal rights, and equal opportunity. These beliefs are the secrets of America’s unity from diversity—in my judgment the most magnificent achievement of our 200 years as a nation.

Ford saw a danger, however—a “growing danger in this country.” And that danger was “conformity of thought and taste and behavior.” The president elaborated:

We need more encouragement and protection for individuality. The wealth we have of cultural, ethnic, religious, and racial traditions are valuable counterbalances to the overpowering sameness and subordination of totalitarian societies. The sense of belonging to any group that stands for something decent and noble, so long as it does not confine free spirits or cultivate hostility to others, is part of the pride every American should have in the heritage of the past. That heritage is rooted now, not in England alone—as indebted as we are for the Magna Carta and the common law—not in Europe alone, or in Africa alone, or Asia, or on the islands of the sea. The American adventure draws from the best of all of mankind’s long sojourn here on Earth and now reaches out into the solar system.

Note that Ford repeats that word “adventure”: “our American adventure,” “the American adventure.” (It is also an experiment, whose results keep coming in.)

That July day in 1976, speaking to 100 new American citizens at Monticello, the president concluded as follows:

Remember that none of us are more than caretakers of this great country. Remember that the more freedom you give to others, the more you will have for yourself. Remember that without law there can be no liberty.

Let me repeat that: Remember that without law there can be no liberty. Ordered liberty is the name of our game, and without the “ordered” part, liberty is a fraud.

And remember, as well, the rich treasures you brought from whence you came, and let us share your pride in them. This is the way that we keep our independence as exciting as the day it was declared and keep the United States of America even more beautiful than Joseph’s coat.

I, personally, believe all this Fourth of July stuff. I really do. All this Betsy Ross and apple-pie stuff. I believe it and, no doubt, always will.