“A State of Becoming”: From My Book Better Angels
History reminds us that Americans are just people: capable of love and hate, compassion and cruelty, failure and greatness. There is no special virtue in our blood. As Calvin Coolidge observed, it is not ancestry but ideals that animate the American soul. What makes America exceptional is not who we are, but what we choose. America is not a state of being, but a state of becoming.
The Founders understood, sometimes painfully, that this great experiment depends on ordinary people doing extraordinary things: choosing principle over power, compassion over cruelty, and justice over ease. The American political system—its checks, balances, and parchment promises—means little if the people do not choose right over might, love over hate, and freedom over oppression.
To preserve and realize the American ideals is not to worship them from a distance. It is to live it. America is not a relic. It is a living thing. It does not rest in monuments or museums. It lives in us—sustained not by memory, but by action. When lived, these ideals catch like a spark and spread from person to person, town to town, generation to generation, until, like a great flame, they burn brightly and are realized anew.
About the book: Better Angels: Reflections on American Courage, Struggle, and Hope gathers more than forty columns by Dakoda Pettigrew, spotlighting defining moments of moral courage and national reckoning—from colonial resistance to modern political turmoil. Called “a must-read” by the Knoxville Daily Sun, Better Angels will be released August 13 in paperback on Amazon and as an eBook on September 10.