From its inception, the United States of America has wrestled with two contrasting and conflicting juxtapositions.
One is the American Dream.
The American Dream is everything that is right in the world. It’s a promise of a better life. It’s the idealism that if you work hard and are ambitious, then there is no limit on what you can achieve and how prosperous you can become. It’s the melting pot idea of “E pluribus unum”: out of many, one. We’re a nation of people from all walks of life, from all social statuses, from all countries around the world. We’re a nation of pioneers and innovators, of rebels and patriots, of resilience and compassion. At its finest, the USA shines brightly like that beacon on the hill. When the collective soul of this country is in harmony, it sings a song that echoes throughout the world. “My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty” indeed.
What butts up against that idealism is the realism that while this country is still the best this world has ever known, it is still a very flawed product and often falls short of its ideals. I can never reconcile in my brain that the very brilliant Founding Fathers of this nation, who spilled all their blood for liberty and freedom and to start this country, could be the same people who owned slaves. That contrast will never make sense. Aside from that, we’ve had wars, civil rights movements and turmoil of every imaginable kind. We’ve survived attacks from the outside and fools from the inside.
Our duty, as citizens, is to measure the distance between the shining light on the hill and the darkness of a failed promise. As the daughters and sons of liberty, there is nothing wrong with loving this country to the fullest but still recognizing we have many miles to go to reach our ideals. Neither party has a lock on patriotism nor is immune to criticism. As the great writer Mark Twain wrote, “Patriotism is to support your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
We can find common ground to stand on. We can disagree without being uncivil. We should celebrate our differences instead of fighting over them and at the risk of being too cliche, we should heed the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. who said:
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
We’ve survived our fools. We’ve endured turmoil and strife. We’ve fought numerous wars and fought our demons from within.
This nation of ours has persevered through it all. We’ve seen the very worst and the very best that humanity has to offer. We still stand as the beacon on the hill, and through all of our flaws, we’re still the best country this world has ever known.
There are no better words to end with than those of Abraham Lincoln, who said in his Gettysburg Address, “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
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