THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT
The cradle of modern democracies is celebrating its two hundred and fiftieth spring. For us Azoreans, America carries a particularly profound meaning. But we are not alone. For the entire Western world, the United States has been—and continues to be—the political laboratory where humanist ideals found expression in three simple words that would change the world forever: WE THE PEOPLE.
A revolution cultivated around the conviction that power, will, and the strength to transform the world reside in the people.
It all began with thirteen colonies along the shores of New England. With the unjust taxation imposed by a monarchy concerned only with extracting wealth from afar. With abuses of power in every form exercised by London. History may repeat itself many times, but the opportunity to correct it is perpetual—and the formula for doing so was discovered in the revolutionary laboratory of America.
Everything began to take root in an age of geographical transformation, as newly discovered worlds awakened the ambitions of Europe’s great powers and the desperation of those sent to inhabit vast, untamed lands on an immense continent—one already inhabited for thousands of years by diverse civilizations and scattered Indigenous peoples.
During the eighteenth century, the wars between France and England assumed global proportions. France would lose an immense expanse of territory in the New World as a consequence of its defeats in Europe. England asserted its dominance. It was on its way to becoming the greatest empire in history. Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, too, found themselves subject to British power. It seemed impossible to challenge such overwhelming strength.
And yet, a mere handful of some two dozen men decided they could alter the course of history.
They confronted what was then the world’s greatest military power armed with an ideal that would change the world. Monarchies had become obsolete. A king should no longer determine the life and death of his subjects. Justice had to be shared rather than reserved for an elite. Freedom of thought had to be truly free—even when it meant criticizing His Majesty. Every human being is born free and equal.
They dared to write their own Constitution, embracing it as their political bible. For the first time in human history, the people reclaimed the dignity of which they had been deprived for centuries. They assumed command of their own destiny, and that was something entirely unprecedented.
That group of men knew they were blazing a path no one had ever walked before. There were no blueprints. There was, instead, a guiding ideal: Liberty.
That flame crossed the oceans with astonishing speed, spreading across the world. Less than two decades later, France—emboldened by the American example that absolute monarchies could indeed be overthrown—rose in revolution. The American victory proved that the ideals of the Enlightenment could succeed not merely in theory, but in practice.
The title of this column is borrowed from a commemorative documentary series currently being broadcast by Netflix in five episodes. Exceptionally well researched, it transports us to the years between 1772 and 1780 and presents what amounts to a genuine treatise on political science.
I encourage everyone to watch this remarkable series, for it helps us better understand that Donald Trump is not America, but merely another democratic experiment to emerge from that extraordinarily fertile political laboratory.
After all, America’s multiethnic character knows no boundaries. Those exist only in the rest of the world.