Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute

Volume 8, Number 7 September 2016

Publisher, Dr. Donald W. Sweeting

Editor, Jeff Hunt

IF YOU CAN KEEP IT: THE FORGOTTEN PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY

By Eric Metaxas

Eric Metaxas, author, speaker, radio host, addresses the 2016 Western Conservative Summit audience about the importance of reclaiming Americas goodness.

If you care about the world, you have to care about America.
If you have the idea that, America is going to hell and itll be
good for America, the church will thrive under persecution,
thats not a Biblical view. Its like being glad that somebody
is suffering because it will be good for their soul. We dont
rejoice in suffering, we want to help people. We need to care
about this country and then we can care about the world.
Youve always known that America is a beacon of freedom
to the world. Its basically been our mission to be a blessing
to the world. I would argue that God has mightily blessed
this nation specifically so we can be a blessing to the world.
In fact, we have exported freedoms to the world. Weve sent
treasure and weve spilled blood on foreign fields. That is
who we are, and its the idea upon which we were founded.
We are being Hollowed Out from Within
Ive just written a book called If You Can Keep It. Ive never
felt as passionate about anything I have written before.
That includes my Bonhoeffer book. I feel like a man on
a mission with this book because our country is in serious

danger of becoming America in name only. Sometimes

you face an existential crisis and you can see it for what it
is. The Revolutionary War was an existential crisis. This is
a different kind of existential crisis. Were being hollowed
out from within. We are not having our freedoms taken
away at gunpoint, we are allowing them to evaporate, and
we are becoming America in name only.
And that will be the greatest tragedy in the history of the
world because we have been blessed beyond all measure
for purposes beyond our own shores. We have been a
beacon of freedom to people around the world, people in
Eric Metaxas is a New York Times #1 bestselling author, host of a nationally
syndicated radio show, founder of Socrates in the City: Conversations on the
Examined Life, and keynote speaker at the 2012 National Prayer Breakfast.
Centennial Institute sponsors research, events, and publications to enhance
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If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of

American Liberty by Eric Metaxas. Available at
cibookclub.com.

the gulag, lucky to find a

rat to eat. When Ronald
Reagan
said,
Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down
this wall, those people
found courage and hope.
That is the power we have
had on the world stage.
We have been a hope to
those without hope and
without freedom. And
we can be proud of the
fact that we have given
hope to people beyond
our shores.

Dr. Franklin, what have you given us? A monarchy or a

republic? Now, she wasnt being coy. It was a world of
monarchies at that time. But the Founders chose liberty,
and he said, A republic madam, if you can keep it.
Faith, Freedom, and Virtue
Sometimes we think thats cute. If you can keep it, haha.
Its a haunting thing, because he knew that we the people,
might not be able to keep it. He and the Founders
understood that what they had created, this treasure of
self-government and liberty, was fragile. It would require
so much of its citizens that they might well not keep it. It is
easy to be governed from above or from without. You need
to do nothing except stay out of trouble. But if you want
to govern yourself, it takes more.

So those words that Franklin spoke, If you can keep it, are
My parents came to this
chilling because for about 200 years, rather miraculously,
country in the 1950s, my
we kept it very well. It is the last 40 or so years we have not
dad came from Greece and my mom from Germany. They
been keeping it. Weve been running on fumes.
met in an English class in New York City. They wanted
to become Americans, they became Americans, and they
My new book was influenced by Os Guinness and his
raised my brother and me to love our country. When they
book, A Free Peoples Suicide. Os talks about something
passed the Statue of Liberty on those ships,
called a golden triangle of freedom, which
they got choked up because they knew this
is the idea that freedom requires virtue,
is real. Immigrants are leaving hopelessness
virtue requires faith, and faith in turn
Treasure of
to come to a place where there is hope. This
requires freedom.
was real for me growing up. But in the last Self-Government
Freedom, which is to say self-government,
40 or 50 years, we have not been teaching
requires people to govern themselves. You
these things in our schools, and we
dont steal because somebody is pointing
certainly do not see it in the media. And thats why I wrote
a gun at you, you dont steal because it is wrong. Thats
this new book starting with Ben Franklins famous phrase,
called virtue. All of the Founders understood that without
If you can keep it.
virtue, self-government and the liberties we enjoy are
A Republic, Madam
not possible. When I heard Os Guinness talk about this,
I was sickened because I realize that this idea at the very
What the Founders created at Independence Hall in
heart of the American experiment was unknown to me.
Philadelphia was something genuinely miraculous. Many
Jefferson, Franklin, all of the Founders said that virtue is
of them wrote that it seemed a miracle what they were
utterly crucial to the kind of self-government they were
able to do, to create a way for people to govern themselves
proposing. So in order for us to keep it, as Franklin said,
which had never been done in the history of the planet.
we needed to be basically a virtuous populace.
They created something called a constitution, think of the
audacity of that idea. People around the world goggled in
So freedom requires virtue and virtue requires faith. Faith
awe at the idea that a group of people on the coast of a
and virtue are linked. It doesnt mean that every person of
continent had formed a government whereby the people
faith is virtuous or that every virtuous person is a person
would be genuinely free to govern themselves.
of faith but that communities full of faith tend to be more
It was a wild idea, and they did not know if it would work.
Actually, they knew it might fail. In fact, when Benjamin
Franklin came out of the building, a woman said to him,

virtuous, tend to govern themselves more effectively. When

revival broke out under the preaching of George Whitefield,
Benjamin Franklin observed that those communities where

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Centennial Review September 2016 2

Eric Metaxas encourages Americans to reflect on our countrys sins but to also embrace the good aspects that make our country great.

revival broke out, crime went down. Franklin knew that

what Whitefield was preaching created a populace of faith
and virtue and those people were able to govern themselves
infinitely more effectively than any other group of people.

had this largely negative narrative. And so weve not

loved our country. Weve not taught our children to love
their country.

There is a wrong kind of patriotism and there is a right

kind of patriotism. There is a right kind of healthy selfThe Founders understood the dynamic that freedom
regard and pride. To be constantly despising yourself is
requires virtue, virtue requires faith, and that faith requires
a sick thing. And the narrative among the cultural elites
freedom. If faith is coerced, if it is not utterly free, it is
has been to focus on whats wrong with the
not real faith. You cannot force faith. It has
country. And those people believe theyre
to be free. And when the people are free to
right. Theyre not necessarily evil, but heres the
believe or not believe, to go to that church or
problem, theyre wrong.
The
that church, then faith is real. Then, they will
be people of virtue. Then, they will be able to
Greatness There is no question that the God of the
govern themselves. So religious freedom is at
universe, that the God of the Scriptures has
the very heart of the Founders vision.
of America had His hand on this country. Our secular
version of things is willfully ignorant. There
Repent of Our Sins, Embrace the Good
are numerous things that have happened in
For 40 or 50 years, we have not been keeping
our history that point to Gods hand. The
the republic. Weve not been teaching these things. Weve
Founders saw it, Abraham Lincoln wrote about it. We
bought into the negative narrative and we talk about all
have not been blessed for nothing, we have been blessed
the bad things America has done. Now, there is nothing
to be a blessing to the world. When we say give me your
healthier than facing what youve done wrong so that you
tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, we
can repent of it. But if you are with somebody who just
do that because that is who we are. Its a fundamentally
wants to say were bad, thats a problem. We need to talk
Biblical idea.
about the greatness of America and what it has meant
America Blessed to Bless Others
to people in the world. People like my parents dreamed
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about the idea that America is
of coming to this great nation and raising their children
great because America is good. Thats a Biblical concept,
here. They understood this. But for 40 or 50 years weve
Centennial Review September 2016 3

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IF YOU CAN KEEP IT: THE FORGOTTEN

PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY
By Eric Metaxas
At the 2016 Western Conservative Summit, Eric
Metaxas implores attendees to keep the Republic
strong by embracing faith, freedom, and virtue.
right? That you do Gods will, do what God asks you to
to pray. To go to the Almighty whose hand was involved
do, and He will take care of you because He loves you and
miraculously in their creation during the times of the
wants to bless you. This country needs to understand that
Revolution and to beg Him to open the door so that they
we have been blessed to be a blessing.
could create this Constitution and bring this new way of
being in the world.
We must not allow people to tell us that our patriotism is
a selfish kind of patriotism. We need to love this country.
This 2016 election is a symptom of where we are. For 40
We need to say with humility, we are blessed and we want
years we have not been keeping the republic. And Im here
to use our blessings for the whole world. We want to bring
to blow a trumpet folks, and to say to America,
freedom to the whole world. Our freedoms,
we need to keep the republic. We need to
these extraordinary treasures that never existed
get busy, we need to remind ourselves of the
in the history of the world before 1776, are
Teach
glorious stories of our past, of the heroes who
meant for everybody in the world. So when
died and bled for the freedoms we enjoy. To
George Bush said that everybody should be
Virtue
take those things for granted is nothing less
free, he was right. The problem is, you cant
than a horrible sin. And weve basically taken
Again
just award people this fragile, complicated
them for granted with the help of the media,
thing and expect them to know what to do
with the help of academia, weve not passed
with it. They need to be prepared for it. And
them along. The Constitution is not enough.
this country, largely as a result of English law,
The
people
need
to keep the republic. Franklin knew that if
largely as a result of customs and mores, and also as a result
the
people
dont
keep the republic, the republic goes away.
of the preaching of George Whitefield for four decades,
And when the light goes out of liberty and the America
was able to handle this treasure of freedom.
experiment, there isnt a second or a third hanging around
We Need to Keep the Republic
to replace it. What we have is an inestimable treasure
By the way, Benjamin Franklin, somebody we think of as a
given to us by the God of the Universe for His purposes
French Enlightenment deist, was not. When he was in the
in history. If we want America to be great again, America
constitutional convention, tell me if youve heard this in
must be good again. We must teach virtue again, and we
public school, things were not going well. It was not normal
must teach heroism and self-sacrifice, and all the things
for them to be able to pull off creating a constitution. They
that the Founders knew not to be optional or extra-credit
got so desperate that Benjamin Franklin gave a speech,
but to be absolutely foundational to who we are and to the
I quote it in my book, where he beseeches the assembly
American experiment in history. n
Centennial Review September 2016 4