By Jeffrey A. Tucker at Brownstone dot org.

[The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey Tucker's book, Spirits of America: On the Semiquincentennial.]

In 1973, as the bicentennial of the US approached, the great American essayist and illustrator Eric Sloane was commissioned to write a book commemorating what is great about America. He focused on what we once had and might be losing.

He chose this theme because he was unique in understanding the American experience of the past. He had already written and illustrated several evocative books on Americana, and his voice came to be beloved in circles centered on literary nostalgia.

The result is a fascinating small volume called The Spirits of '76, as published by Walker Press. Long out of print, it makes for enthralling reading. Though I cannot hope to match his insight, it occurred to me to revive his main themes.

All of Sloane's work is worth revisiting. A large collection including his gorgeous illustrations are found in Eric Sloane's America. You can also visit his museum in Connecticut.

In the short book he wrote for the Bicentennial, he begins with a reflection on the age of the value of the past.

"Man so often comments: 'If we only knew then what we know now," but few of us consider: 'If we only could know now what they knew then!'"

That's a sentence to commit to memory. It embeds a powerful truth. We have forgotten so much, or never learned, what our ancestors knew from hard experience. We've had it easy, but this has also denied us the wisdom that comes from building something from scratch.

We've inherited a castle and never thought to wonder who laid the stones. The problem gets worse as we age, and as the country ages.

"We seldom see ourselves growing older," he writes. "The slow change is insidious and although we are told that time flies, it is hard to realize that it is we who do the flying while time actually stands still: the past is but a moment ago."

Yes, that gives you a flavor of the power of his prose. It never stops being insightful and provocative. He goes on to apply the insight to the history of the US.

"The truth is that 1776 belongs to 1776. We cannot hope to recapture the old ways easily, partly because we have so destroyed our past but also because we ourselves have become different. The godly, frugal, content, thankful, work-loving man of yesterday has now become the money-oriented, extravagant, discontented, thankless, work-shunning man of today."

So, yes, his book is meant as a wake-up call: see who we were so that we can compare with who we have become, as people but also as a nation, and then get better.

"We charm ourselves into believing that we have a birthday each year: the truth is that there is only one birthday; all the others are merely celebrating that past event. Stopping long enough to glance backward to see where we once were and where we are now can be enlightening, possibly critical."

The first subject he chooses concerns what he calls "the spirit of respect." I tried but failed to anticipate what he means with this word, but it becomes clear quickly. He proposes the word respect as a replacement for the word patriotism, which he finds too much wrapped up in the history of warfare. The Vietnam experience did indeed loom large in those days.

Respect in his view covers the whole of what is good about patriotism but is inclusive of so much more. It means respect for country and the symbolism thereof, including its music, national anthems, and flag. More than that, it is about respect for the inner air of what these symbols mean to signify.

Above all else, they signify freedom. That is for him the essence of the American idea.

With respect for freedom comes respect for that which freedom grants unto us, including faith, family, community, the dignity of oneself, and the dignity of others. He found tremendous evidence of this idea in American history and worried already in 1973 that this attitude was ever more rare.

Of course, he was wri...