What's So Hot About America?

Somewhere, I forget where, I read a rhetorical question asking what's so good about the United States in the first place. It's easy to pass off the old chestnut about how we are the land of freedom, the place where anyone can become anything with enough hard work. I wanted to stop for a minute and consider what America really means to me.

To me, America is NOT the land of the free. We don't have a monopoly on freedom. In fact, many countries- New Zealand, the Netherlands, Finland, just to name a couple off the top of my head- now have more freedom than Americans do. Nor was America founded to be such- if you seriously read the histories of the American Revolution, you'll find in short order that the core of the patriot movement was composed of smugglers who didn't want to pay taxes and elected politicians engaged in a power struggle against a Parliament three thousand miles away. Freedom, to them, meant being able to boss the little people around in America and evade paying taxes as they always had done.

What's more, the US has failed time and again in even holding up to its rhetoric. Old Glory flew over a country that fought to defend slavery eighty years before the Stars and Bars was raised over the South. The American flag represents the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee just as much as it represents Yorktown or Iwo Jima. On several occasions US troops have invaded foreign countries or infiltrated them to overthrow elected governments because those governments espoused ideologies our leaders didn't like, establishing unelected puppet dictatorships instead.

Even the basic freedoms listed in our laws are honored in the breach rather than the upholding. You can say or print anything you like- so long as nobody finds it offensive or obscene. You can worship as you will- but depending what part of the country you're in, you might either be forced to keep it secret or else to pay lip service to worshipping Christ. Your ability to bear weapons of self defense is hindered or utterly destroyed, again depending on where you are. Your property can be siezed without a court hearing; you can be searched without warrant; you may be sued for acts which a criminal jury has found you not guilty of; you may be held indefinitely without legal counsel or writ of habeas corpus merely because someone calls you a terrorist. The only amendment in the Bill of Rights which has not effectively been destroyed is the one which prohibits the government from forcing you to house soldiers.

As for past glories and accomplishments- feh. Victory over Germany and Japan happened almost thirty years before I was born. The conditions that alowed Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Edison to rise to greatness have been legislated away- and for the better, since all three were ruthless scoundrels out for their own interests only. I live in the world of today, where opportunities to rise above one's station are rare, where our government is known not for liberating nations but for propping up dictators and for threatening to overthrow any government we don't like.

There is a great deal which is, to be perfectly honest, EVIL about our nation.

Yet I don't hate it. On balance, I love the United States, and I am actually proud to be an American.

I suppose the reason why I still love the USA, warts and all, is her potential. Despite the blinders and hypocrisy of her founding fathers, she has come a very long way in two hundred twenty-nine years. Slavery is gone, as are the laws which kept former slaves and their descendants in peonage. People may vote despite their gender, religion, or wealth (or lack thereof). A hundred years ago, you could be put in prison for openly declaring your atheism or paganism, for discussing birth control, or for having sex out of wedlock; and despite the efforts of people like George W. Bush, not only are all three of these things perfectly legal now, but they are in no danger of ever being made illegal again.

America has high ideals to live up to. Alone among nations today (that I know of), America was founded not to benefit a monarch, or a nationality of people, or an over-arching State, but to protect the people, each and every one, as individuals. No other nation today even gives lip service to the concept that rights originate from individual humans rather than a government.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These are powerful words, and the fact that they were written by a slaveowner who introduced partisan politics and political slander and mudslinging to American elections does not affect the power they wield over the human imagination.

Here are some more powerful words: "We, the People of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect government, ensure the domestic tranquility, provide for a common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The key words there are, "secure the blessings of liberty." Especially liberty. Too often Americans have sought security rather than liberty for themselves. Too often Americans have deprived others of liberty, in whole or in part, for their own purpose or pleasure. But it is liberty, above all, which our nation proclaims as its reason for existence. In the ideal, our government, our society, works to defend not merely the people, but the freedom and liberty of each individual person.

That's worth honoring. That's worth fighting for (and most of those battles will be against fellow Americans, via public debate and the ballot box).

And that's worth loving.

Happy Independence Day, y'all.

What's So Hot About America?

Somewhere, I forget where, I read a rhetorical question asking what's so good about the United States in the first place. It's easy to pass off the old chestnut about how we are the land of freedom, the place where anyone can become anything with enough hard work. I wanted to stop for a minute and consider what America really means to me.

To me, America is NOT the land of the free. We don't have a monopoly on freedom. In fact, many countries- New Zealand, the Netherlands, Finland, just to name a couple off the top of my head- now have more freedom than Americans do. Nor was America founded to be such- if you seriously read the histories of the American Revolution, you'll find in short order that the core of the patriot movement was composed of smugglers who didn't want to pay taxes and elected politicians engaged in a power struggle against a Parliament three thousand miles away. Freedom, to them, meant being able to boss the little people around in America and evade paying taxes as they always had done.

What's more, the US has failed time and again in even holding up to its rhetoric. Old Glory flew over a country that fought to defend slavery eighty years before the Stars and Bars was raised over the South. The American flag represents the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee just as much as it represents Yorktown or Iwo Jima. On several occasions US troops have invaded foreign countries or infiltrated them to overthrow elected governments because those governments espoused ideologies our leaders didn't like, establishing unelected puppet dictatorships instead.

Even the basic freedoms listed in our laws are honored in the breach rather than the upholding. You can say or print anything you like- so long as nobody finds it offensive or obscene. You can worship as you will- but depending what part of the country you're in, you might either be forced to keep it secret or else to pay lip service to worshipping Christ. Your ability to bear weapons of self defense is hindered or utterly destroyed, again depending on where you are. Your property can be siezed without a court hearing; you can be searched without warrant; you may be sued for acts which a criminal jury has found you not guilty of; you may be held indefinitely without legal counsel or writ of habeas corpus merely because someone calls you a terrorist. The only amendment in the Bill of Rights which has not effectively been destroyed is the one which prohibits the government from forcing you to house soldiers.

As for past glories and accomplishments- feh. Victory over Germany and Japan happened almost thirty years before I was born. The conditions that alowed Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Edison to rise to greatness have been legislated away- and for the better, since all three were ruthless scoundrels out for their own interests only. I live in the world of today, where opportunities to rise above one's station are rare, where our government is known not for liberating nations but for propping up dictators and for threatening to overthrow any government we don't like.

There is a great deal which is, to be perfectly honest, EVIL about our nation.

Yet I don't hate it. On balance, I love the United States, and I am actually proud to be an American.

I suppose the reason why I still love the USA, warts and all, is her potential. Despite the blinders and hypocrisy of her founding fathers, she has come a very long way in two hundred twenty-nine years. Slavery is gone, as are the laws which kept former slaves and their descendants in peonage. People may vote despite their gender, religion, or wealth (or lack thereof). A hundred years ago, you could be put in prison for openly declaring your atheism or paganism, for discussing birth control, or for having sex out of wedlock; and despite the efforts of people like George W. Bush, not only are all three of these things perfectly legal now, but they are in no danger of ever being made illegal again.

America has high ideals to live up to. Alone among nations today (that I know of), America was founded not to benefit a monarch, or a nationality of people, or an over-arching State, but to protect the people, each and every one, as individuals. No other nation today even gives lip service to the concept that rights originate from individual humans rather than a government.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These are powerful words, and the fact that they were written by a slaveowner who introduced partisan politics and political slander and mudslinging to American elections does not affect the power they wield over the human imagination.

Here are some more powerful words: "We, the People of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect government, ensure the domestic tranquility, provide for a common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The key words there are, "secure the blessings of liberty." Especially liberty. Too often Americans have sought security rather than liberty for themselves. Too often Americans have deprived others of liberty, in whole or in part, for their own purpose or pleasure. But it is liberty, above all, which our nation proclaims as its reason for existence. In the ideal, our government, our society, works to defend not merely the people, but the freedom and liberty of each individual person.

That's worth honoring. That's worth fighting for (and most of those battles will be against fellow Americans, via public debate and the ballot box).

And that's worth loving.

Happy Independence Day, y'all.