Yes, Let’s Make America Great Again (but not the way Trump means)
After the last couple of weeks, I’ve been feeling very down and negative about the direction in which our country is headed, which is unusual, as I’m generally pretty positive about it. The rise of Trump and the shooting in Orlando, etc. But this afternoon, I came across this wonderfully written piece by my cousin Kevin, and once again, I have some hope. I really needed this today.
There has been a lot of talk about returning America back to a past glory, an ideal time when “America was great.” I couldn’t agree more. Let’s look at some moments in our history where America was truly great.
Why not start at the beginning? Facing religious persecution in England and other parts of Europe, people made the treacherous journey across the Atlantic so that they and their families could practice their faith without fear of imprisonment and persecution by the government. Later, this religious freedom was enshrined in the constitution. Let’s make America great again and become a place where people can escape lands where extremist and narrow minded religious ideologies are forced upon them. Let’s make America great again and welcome those who want to practice a faith that is respectful of their traditions but also maintains human dignity for all.
Let’s fast forward to 1865, when America had the courage to change. Until that point all non-free people, i.e. black slaves, only counted as ⅗ of a person. Even though this was constitutional law, there was recognition that what seemed right three generations earlier was finally realized to be morally wrong. Let’s make America great again, and acknowledge like our forefathers, that the constitution did not come down from a mountain engraved on stone tablets but can be changed and has been changed for over 250 years. Let’s make America great again and realize that the parts of the constitution that were designed to protect the population from wild animals, a British invasion or (justifiably) angry natives on the frontier now protects us from nothing, in fact, only puts us in more danger.
Another moment of American greatness came in 1933 when the prohibition of alcohol was repealed. About 15 years earlier in a desire to purify the nation, alcohol became illegal. What followed was an unregulated underground market fueled by extreme greed and violence. Parts of America’s cities and mountain areas were turned into war zones between rival mobs and bootleggers. The repeal of prohibition ended it all virtually overnight. Let’s make America great again and realize that while controlled substances certainly have ill effects, that their subsequent prohibition and the black market around them has far more violent and damaging effects on society.
And last but not least, let’s remember America’s long history against despotism. Starting with King George III and then on to Kaiser Wilhelm II to Hitler to Mussolini to Stalin, America has at many points in history stood against deposits and demagogues who prioritize their own self-aggrandizement over the best interests of their own people. Let’s make America great again and refuse to flirt with this style of leadership in our own country. Let’s not desecrate the graves of those who died at Bunker Hill, in French fields nor on the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima with a vote for xenophobia, misogyny, bigotry and moral cowardice in the disguise in the cheap cloak of patriotism.
To allow our own country to raise leaders who promote distorted narratives of our nation would not usher in a new era of greatness but rather precipitate our greatest disaster. A disaster in which our nation no longer represents a set of higher ideals or unique “exceptionalism” in history. Instead we would become like every other “great” nation before us that rose and then collapsed because it forgot its ideals and ignored the present challenges in an orgy of flag waving and inflammatory rhetoric
(And even though I am personally an atheist, I think that Kevin found a quite appropriate Bible verse for the situation.)
Pride precedes a disaster, and an arrogant attitude precedes a fall. -Proverbs 16:18