I've told this story here in 2005, but last night I walked on the Mall and looked at the lit U.S. Capitol and was inspired to tell the story to someone else. So here it is again.
In 1994 I was dating a woman who was helping to raise her 7-year-old niece. We often would go to Washington, D.C., and often we would take her with us.
It was a pleasant day and we held her hands on either side of her and I said, "Do you know who owns that building on the hill?"
She looked at it and shook her head.
"You do," I said. "You own that building. It's beautiful, isn't it? See that one there and there" and I pointed to the Smithsonians and the National Archives. "You own them too."
Her brown eyes got big and she asked me which room belonged to her.
"All of them," I said. "It belongs to you. You own that building as much as anyone in the land. You have to share it with your grandmother and your aunt and me and 295 million other people in this country."
But, I emphasized, you own them as much as anyone else.
I asked her if she remembered the White House we had walked by earlier in the day. She nodded. "You own that too. The president lives there, but he just borrows it. You own it. And if the president walks up to you, you can tell him `My name is Ariel and you work for me.'" (This was in 1994. Bill Clinton was president. He met with ordinary Americans without fear of their dissent -- unlike his successor, George W. Bush.)
I told her of the American Revolution and how the colonists bravely overthrew a king and that because of that she never needed to bow down to anyone. Because of what they did she is the equal to any king or queen on the planet.
I pointed to the National Archives and how it stores the Constitution and how the Founding Fathers wrote it to create a new covenant between the people with each other. I told her that the Founding Fathers knew they couldn't make anything perfect, but they tried anyway with the Constitution. I'm sure a lot of what I said went over her head, but she listened anyway.
My family may not own much. Our house may be small and our vehicles have too many miles on them. But we own some pretty property in Washington, D.C., some spectacular forests and beaches and wetlands across the country. We own them. We all own them.
And we own that piece of paper in the National Archives. Those words and what they represent belong to all of us.
People died to give them to us and people died to preserve them for us.
Too often of late some of our fellow citizens have tried to act as if they are the only true patriotic Americans and that they alone know what the Constitution says and what it means.
There are also those who see the Capitol with experienced and cynical eyes and say that it no longer belongs to us. At times that does seem true.
But we cannot let the ignorant and the cynical take away our birthright. We owe it to those who held on throughout the long cold nights at Valley Forge, who held the line at Little Round Top, who stormed Normandy Beach, who kept her seat on a bus, and marched at Selma.
Sometimes, though, it's good to stop and look at what we have and remember it is worth keeping.