BY: BEANIE GEOGHEGAN
Heroes give us hope and inspire us to strive to become better. Recognizing qualities and virtues in those heroes can lead to healthy personal reflection and cause us to take inventory to see where we fall short. In The Closing Of The American Mind, Allan Bloom lamented that his students struggled to respond when he asked them who their heroes were. Decades later, we still find young people struggling to identify heroes in their lives, robbing them of that hope and inspiration they so desperately need. The good news is that American heroes abound and Jeremy Adams has written an excellent book highlighting some of the great ones that parents and teachers can easily share with the young people in their lives.
In his book, Lesson In Liberty: Thirty Rules for Living from Ten Extraordinary Americans, Adams, a seasoned civics teacher and “unapologetic romantic about the United States,” argues that young people in America today are suffering profoundly from a lack of knowledge, understanding, respect, and reverence for the heroes and heroines who came before them. He attempts to remedy this as he shares the trials and triumphs of ten of those amazing individuals.
Though the lives of each extraordinary American hero featured could fill volumes, and some have, Adams simplifies it for us by highlighting three key lessons we can learn from each of their journeys. Throughout, each hero’s tale doesn’t ignore their imperfections but rather chooses to focus on the qualities and characteristics that enabled them to do great things despite those imperfections and flaws.
It’s fitting that the first American hero Adams chooses to highlight is George Washington. There are so many remarkable characteristics embodied by Washington throughout his life, it must have been daunting to narrow the list enough to come up with three lessons, but that’s precisely what Adams did. One of the lessons is that “Appearances Matter”. While appearances certainly don’t make a person a hero, he notes that they mattered considerably to Washington. Adams states that, “He cultivated his appearance with extraordinary care, projecting an image of the patrician soldier whose honor and stature were demonstrated by his inordinate muscle and abundant social grace”. Of course, it wasn’t just his dress and physical presentation that set him apart from the crowd, he was also keenly aware his words and actions mattered and therefore was even more attentive and disciplined about those. While most of us are familiar with Washington, many might not be as familiar with the lessons from his life highlighted in this book.
Two of the lessons Adams tells us we can learn from the amazing life of Clara Barton seemed especially relevant for our time: “If You See a Problem, Be the Solution” and “Never Stop Searching for New Challenges.” There is a tremendous temptation in today’s world to spend an excessive amount of time on social media complaining about the issues of the day while doing nothing in your community to change things for the better. There is also a temptation to waste inordinate amounts of time mindlessly scrolling through videos and memes. Neither of those are the habits of heroes and I doubt they would have been habits of Clara Barton. Her “strong distaste for apathy and complacency” provided her with plenty of opportunities to demonstrate her intelligence, courage, and tenacity and is likely the reason we still read about her accomplishments today.
The qualities of preparation, perseverance, and patriotism resonate uniquely in all ten of the extraordinary Americans that Adams features in his book. Arthur Ashe spent countless hours on and off the court preparing for his biggest tennis matches, while Lincoln prepared for his life of service through the study of Law and history. Ben Nighthorse Campbell and Theodore Roosevelt exemplified perseverance throughout their lives in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles in childhood. James Madison and Ruth Bader Ginsburg displayed a level of patriotism that won them the friendship of those who sometimes disagreed with their views, but highly respected their loyalty to America’s founding principles.
Whether parents and teachers use this book to inspire young people in their lives or American citizens read it to be encouraged and reminded about the people who paved the way for them, it will not disappoint. Hopefully, new lessons can be gleaned from the familiar heroes, and new heroes will be discovered through the lessons Jeremy Adams brings to light. Heroes give us hope and inspire us. Thankfully, we have books like Lesson In Liberty to remind us of a few of them.
