What happens when a nation founded on a shared idea stops believing in itself?
According to The Honesty Project, a partnership between The Free Press and the polling firm Populace, 62 percent of Americans believe the greatest threat to the country is other Americans. Nearly four in 10 members of Generation Z believe violence may be necessary to save America. Ideas foundational to our country—that violence is bad, that disagreement is something to celebrate rather than fear—no longer enjoy broad consensus.
Major Nicholas Dockery understands the danger of this reality more than most. A retired U.S. Army officer who has been deployed multiple times to Afghanistan and earned some of the military’s highest honors, he has spent his adult life fighting to preserve the ideals that bind America together. On June 18, speaking at the White House after receiving the Medal of Honor, Dockery reflected on what the U.S. looks like at its best: a nation that instinctively comes together in moments of crisis. His message is simple: We shouldn’t have to wait for disaster to remember why we love this country. We’re honored to share a version of his speech today. —The Editors.
As a young boy, I spent a large part of my time in Kansas. If anybody’s familiar with that part of the country, tornadoes are a regular part of life. When I was 16, I remember seeing the aftermath of what a tornado can cause. Specifically, in a place called Hoisington, Kansas. It was about 70 miles from where I was going to school at the time. You see what a 200-mile-an-hour wind ripping through a small rural town can do to homes: It levels them.
It’s the kind of wrath that only God, through nature, can unleash. In moments, it can undo what took man decades to build. There one minute is your home and your life; the next second, a town is gone. Along with other students from my school, I volunteered to go out there and help. When we arrived, I saw a movement of people from all over the state rushing in to help.
I saw people of all ages helping those who had lost everything—everything they had. They were picking through the rubble, trying to recover photographs or anything salvageable from a life where they had put down roots, where they had raised a family, where they had built a community.
I saw firsthand what we as one people can do for one another during a time of crisis.
How we can be there for one another.
How we can answer the call, and render aid and support and care for those who, at that time, may not be able to help themselves.
Five months later, early one morning in September, I shockingly watched—as did many of you in this room—as two commercial airliners crashed into the New York skyline. There, in my second-period math class, we all huddled around the television, confused and afraid.
We watched buildings crumble.
