I’m an American. I’m proud to be an American. I enjoy our freedoms and believe that our republican (with a little ‘r’) form of government is worthy of emulation. However, I’m not prone to believe that we can bully the rest of the world into that emulation based upon any claim of ‘moral superiority’. Any U.S. citizen should be very wary of holding ourselves up as a ‘moral’ example to the world. We have a history and the world is no longer afraid to throw it in our face. Within our own borders, our history and our national conscience can be found a mirror image of the world around us; lying just beneath a thin veneer of chauvinistic dogma. And, every now and again, human ugliness rises to the surface. We’re just as guilty as the rest. I propose, however, that this is the wrong sales approach for the ‘American Way of Life.”
Within a national history less than 240 years old, are found terrorism, racial genocide, religious persecution and ethnic cleansing …. and many within the last century; while we, as a country, held ourselves up as ‘the land of the free’. You match the name with the crime: Rosewood, Nauvoo, Oklahoma City, and Manzanar. George Santayana said it. “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Repeat it we have and repeat it we probably will again, for each of these ‘crimes against humanity’ grows from the very human frailties of greed, distrust and fear. We are an aggregate of every poor, frustrated and malcontented element the rest of the world has ever expelled from its borders; hardly an asset that we would wish to put forward as an example. Yet there is hope within the very fabric of the flag in which we wrap ourselves as ‘Americans’.
We must constantly remind ourselves that it is only our ‘rule of law’ that protects us from greater anarchy. It is our Constitution, that miraculous document written before steam, electricity or electronic commerce, that guards us from constant political chaos. The very threads of the individual freedoms woven into that document are as much the lifelines to our individualism as they are the warp and woof of the national fabric.
If we view areas of the world, such as the Balkans, Equatorial Africa and the Middle East as examples, the United States, as a political entity, ought not to have survived its infancy. We inhabit a geographic area 3000 miles wide, encompassing lifeless deserts, towering mountains, seemingly endless shorelines, verdant plains and virgin forests; small identifiable entities bound inexplicably into a single economic union. And, we have populated it with every major ethnic, cultural, racial and religious faction in the world; all woven into that shimmering tough fabric of many colors we call ‘the Americans’.
Despite our own historical visits to the dark-side of humanity, the United States is still the place to which the world’s ‘unwanted’ continue to emigrate. We may, among our other firsts, be the only nation where our population celebrates both its diversity and its national identity in, virtually, the same breath. I’ve never heard of Pakistani-Britons or Japanese-Peruvians, yet both countries have fairly large contingents of immigrants. Within our shores and borders, we celebrate Asian, Hispanic and Middle-Eastern cultural infusions, yet these groups choose to blend together as much as they stand apart, calling themselves Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and despite all our attempts at genocide … Native-Americans. What is it about this place we call America? What is its magic?
The magic is in the very people who make up ‘America’. For every example of cruelty are a hundred examples of kindness. From each spotlit demonstration of injustice reflect a thousand examples of self-sacrifice. For each individual who would destroy our way of life in a senseless act of terror are a million who believe that, while admittedly imperfect, it is the best on earth and each works to make it even better for all Americans; even our most vocal detractors.
The Framers didn’t know the magic they had wrought. Within the Constitution lies the strength of America. Dissent is protected; for it prevents the majority from become a tyrant. Diversity is welcomed; for it nourishes our national character. Our history may be spotted with the same stains as other lands, but at least we try very hard not to make the same mistake twice. Now, that trait is worthy of emulation.
