CITY ON A HILL

You know him, you love him, you can't live without his Constitutional Calendars. Much like your morning coffee and afternoon colada, Judge Hirsch's Constitutional Calendar had become 2019's must read. Without further ado....

The notion of America as “a city on a hill,” or “a shining city upon a hill” traces its origins to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.  See Mathew 5:14.  The phrase was famously used in 1630 by John Winthrop, a clergyman aboard the vessel Arabella, exhorting future Massachusetts Bay Colonists to the task that lay before them.

            On January 9, 1961, President-Elect Kennedy, appearing before the legislature in his home state of Massachusetts, remarked:

I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always consider", he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us". Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arbella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less awesome than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. History will not judge our endeavors—and a government cannot be selected—merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to whom much is given, much is required.

            President Ronald Reagan referred to the same event and image on the eve of his election in 1980:

I have quoted John Winthrop's words more than once on the campaign trail this year—for I believe that Americans in 1980 are every bit as committed to that vision of a shining "city on a hill," as were those long ago settlers. ...

These visitors to that city on the Potomac do not come as white or black, red or yellow; they are not Jews or Christians; conservatives or liberals; or Democrats or Republicans. They are Americans awed by what has gone before, proud of what for them is still… a shining city on a hill.