A Most Memorable Lunch and Honoring July 4
I teach in multiple of Wharton’s executive education classes. When I do, I eat at least two meals a day with participants. During the runup to the 2016 elections, I lunched with a German participant in a leadership program. He was likely in his early 40s and, therefore, born well after WWII.
He had grown up in a Germany that persistently and publicly has struggled with its 20th century legacy, namely as a republic that fell to Nazis who, though never winning even 37% of the popular vote, violently converted a ‘seat at the table’ into a demented, horrific and nearly unimaginably destructive dictatorship. They unleashed murderous atrocities upon their fellow Germans, including at least one of my German relatives, as well as upon the rest of the world. The Nazis targeted the different, the ‘other’—including Jews, the Romani (Gypsies), Communists, intellectuals, trade unionists, Slavs (especially Poles), Catholics, resistors of any stripe, the ‘defective’ (e.g., the mentally and physically ‘disabled’), and the ‘socially aberrant‘ (e.g., those of ‘alternative’ sexual orientation) … and they initiated WWII with its tens of millions killed and even more wounded and displaced.
The Germans have generally not only acknowledged this part of their past but have also sought reconciliation, not without internal and external resistance, yet as led by prime minister after prime minister from Adenauer to Brandt to Merkel. They have attempted to understand this history, to prevent its recurrence (or even an echo of it), and, as possible, to make amends--all while protecting and balancing the right to free speech and free political expression. Barbarity and violence have not resided only in Germany, far from it. German consciousness and ownership of their 20th century atrocities, however, generally outstrips such ownership by other countries of theirs. In short, Germans have worked hard to note, to learn, and to redress the horrors that they unleashed upon their country and the world. Have they done enough? What would constitute enough? As a people, they have and do consciously and purposively work at it. As former Prime Minister Willy Brandt said, ‘...no German is free of history.’ Indeed, none of us are, for better or for worse.
My German lunch companion moved our conversation from business to politics. His tone changed. He became serious, even somber. His eyes darkened and his face tightened. He looked me dead on and said, ‘You Americans kick around your democracy like it’s a football. It can break, you know.’ I doubt that I’ll ever forget his words or the countenance that accompanied them, a countenance from a member of a people all too acquainted with such breakage…and its consequences.
Meaning for us Americans this day? July 4 recognizes and celebrates the hard work and sacrifice to date and points toward the hard work and sacrifice to come… IF we wish to honor the day as contained within the Declaration of Independence, namely “to hold these truths…” as one would a loved one—to cherish, support, and protect.
In a similar spirit, Frederick Douglass, escaped enslaved person and internationally recognized human rights advocate, offered the following tough edged counsel in a July 4th speech: “Your fathers {sic} have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work…You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers {sic} to cover your indolence.” July 5, 1852.
https://www.gregoryshea.com/blog/leadership-hard-times-amp-the-hard-work-of-truth-telling https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1852FrederickDouglass.pdf
And, as Abraham Lincoln said on November 19, 1863, as he stood at a Gettysburg cemetery which held some of the tens of thousands killed at Gettysburg that summer as part of a war that would claim, arguably, more American lives than all other American wars combined: “We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/classroom/app/uploads/2013/11/Transcript-of-the-Gettysburg-Address.pdf
Hence, may this July 4th contribute to our renewed commitment to the work at hand, including our rediscovering our bonds of historic affection along with our bonds as an evolving yet still aspiring people, a people committed to furthering the work begun so long ago: Work marked with a national birth certificate on this day in 1776, work that remains so incomplete, so vulnerable, work, to date, so laboriously and, far too often, slowly and painfully advanced…work that is now ours.
Be well.