From the beginning the American republic conceived of itself as a great experiment in the realization of liberty. This experiment has come to be conjoined, serendipitously, with another fact about America—its peculiar relationship to the process of modernization. Talcott Parsons has called America“the lead society.” This is not an expression of nationalist megalomania, but rather a descriptive (if you will, a “value-free”) statement to the effect that a number of modernizing forces have gone further in this country than anywhere else. It is in this double sense that I am prepared to use the term chosen for America. For better or for worse, we are the most modernized society in the contemporary world. And, audaciously, we continue to carry on the experiment of free institutions in this not necessarily enviable condition. Liberty is on the retreat today all over the world. I cannot pursue here the far-reaching, and sinister, implications of this for America's role on the international scene. But the institutions that embody liberty are also under great pressure domestically. My observations in what follows pertain to this domestic crisis. They are animated by the hope that, if we can resolve this crisis without abandoning the experiment, we may still serve as a lesson for the human race. Perhaps we are “chosen”to do this.

John Carroll was disturbed about the future of Catholicism as he surveyed the scene in the aftermath of the American Revolution. As a supporter of the patriot movement he was pleased that the policy of religious toleration allowed Catholics to participate fully in the political life of the new nation. No doubt he also perceived that the wartime alliance with Catholic France had done much to improve the status of the church among his countrymen. But these positive features were outweighed by the disorganization of the church and the apathy of her ministers. There were only about two dozen priests in the new republic, several of whom were too old to be of any use. But even the younger ones seemed listless and demoralized.

Let me begin with a statement of my own ambivalence in this setting—and of my struggle to overcome it. As many of you must surely know, there are large numbers of blacks and other nonwhites who continue to have profound misgivings about any level of participation in the current American parade of bicentennial events. And I share many of the feelings of that group. We do not celebrate, cannot celebrate, what most of white America celebrates.

American aspiration, like love, is a many-splendored thing. Its roots are deep in the history of this country. In great part, it is the sum of the aspirations of every single American who came to these shores, if they came freely as most did, seeking something splendid, something impossible for them in the land they left. In great part also, the aspirations of Americans are what can be derived from the thoughts, often conflicting, of our Founding Fathers and how these thoughts found expression in our basic documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. To these two considerations one mustadd immediately the fact that aspirations, like everything human, tend to evolve, develop and even change over time. History is a safe departure point, but the farther we progress from that primordial starting point, the greater the danger of history being rewritten to fit some modern persuasion or concern or even hope. Revisionism is a favorite indoor sport in these bicentennial days.