WHEN WAS AMERICA EVER GREAT?
In April 2016 I was in line at Dunkin Donuts. The guy in front of me was a veteran in his 60’s, still pretty buff, wearing a fatigue jacket and a crewcut. He and some friends were discussing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign. The high school kid behind the counter asked snarkily, “When was America EVER great???”
The vet responded: "I'm sixty years old and I've been all around the world. America has its failings, but it’s still the greatest nation in the world, and there are men who have sacrificed much more than a clueless snot-nosed little s*** like you could ever comprehend, just so that you could have a shot at a job and a decent life. If you think there's a better place to live, go find it."
I chimed in, “PREACH IT!”. The vet gave me a nod and a thumbs up.
For many, afflicted with historical myopia, slavery’s existence blocks their view of America’s greatness. Step back and take in the larger picture of history and things may take on a different cast.
Slavery was not an American creation. Humanity has practiced slavery as far back as we can remember. Slavery was a given, part of the fabric of the world, and in many places still is. To the ancients, slavery seemed the best way to handle prisoners of war and the indebted. It seemed more humane than just killing such people. Americans with slaves were doing what people had done for millennia and so it seemed neither strange nor uncomfortable. What seemed strange was denying southerners the right to enslave people.
We can’t imagine people or a world like that.
But the world at the time of America’s founding was rapidly evolving. The politically correct stance today curses the imperialism of Great Britain and the enslavement of its colonies, while at the same time apparently forgetting that America was the first to condemn British imperialism. The American Revolution was the first successful overthrow of the shackles of the British Empire.
And our founding fathers went beyond freedom from the British monarchy. They saw liberty for every man, the opportunity for self-government, as an approach to life. Men should be free, and they took steps to make men free.
We often hear of William Wilberforce’s anti-slavery laws. They went into effect in England in 1834 (when Andrew Jackson was president). But by that time, slavery had already been long made illegal by state law in Vermont (1777), Pennsylvania (1780), Massachusetts and New Hampshire (1783), Connecticut and Rhode Island (1784), New Jersey (1804), and New York (1827).
It seems absurd to insist as critical theorists do (e.g. the 1619 Project) that America was founded chiefly to keep people of color enslaved. On the contrary, America was already shedding its old-world garments and donning the garb of the new – liberty for all. The new suit may have been baggy and ill-fitting at first and needed lots of tailoring, but America stumbled towards it.
This doesn’t justify slavery or make slaveholding virtuous. It simply recognizes that people are children of their times and have no choice but to live within them. Medical science of the same time proposed bleeding as a cure for many illnesses, and many good people were bled to death by loved ones who thought they were doing the right thing. Were such people cruelly immoral brutal murderers – or children of their times? Goodness knows what things that we innocently do now will cause our great-great grandchildren to ask “How could they do such things?”
Our founders were men trapped between the times, but their vision of liberty for all was -- and continues to be -- right, however imperfectly they themselves carried it out. And it is still that vision which makes America great and continues to draw people from all over the world to taste true freedom.
The vet responded: "I'm sixty years old and I've been all around the world. America has its failings, but it’s still the greatest nation in the world, and there are men who have sacrificed much more than a clueless snot-nosed little s*** like you could ever comprehend, just so that you could have a shot at a job and a decent life. If you think there's a better place to live, go find it."
I chimed in, “PREACH IT!”. The vet gave me a nod and a thumbs up.
For many, afflicted with historical myopia, slavery’s existence blocks their view of America’s greatness. Step back and take in the larger picture of history and things may take on a different cast.
Slavery was not an American creation. Humanity has practiced slavery as far back as we can remember. Slavery was a given, part of the fabric of the world, and in many places still is. To the ancients, slavery seemed the best way to handle prisoners of war and the indebted. It seemed more humane than just killing such people. Americans with slaves were doing what people had done for millennia and so it seemed neither strange nor uncomfortable. What seemed strange was denying southerners the right to enslave people.
We can’t imagine people or a world like that.
But the world at the time of America’s founding was rapidly evolving. The politically correct stance today curses the imperialism of Great Britain and the enslavement of its colonies, while at the same time apparently forgetting that America was the first to condemn British imperialism. The American Revolution was the first successful overthrow of the shackles of the British Empire.
And our founding fathers went beyond freedom from the British monarchy. They saw liberty for every man, the opportunity for self-government, as an approach to life. Men should be free, and they took steps to make men free.
We often hear of William Wilberforce’s anti-slavery laws. They went into effect in England in 1834 (when Andrew Jackson was president). But by that time, slavery had already been long made illegal by state law in Vermont (1777), Pennsylvania (1780), Massachusetts and New Hampshire (1783), Connecticut and Rhode Island (1784), New Jersey (1804), and New York (1827).
It seems absurd to insist as critical theorists do (e.g. the 1619 Project) that America was founded chiefly to keep people of color enslaved. On the contrary, America was already shedding its old-world garments and donning the garb of the new – liberty for all. The new suit may have been baggy and ill-fitting at first and needed lots of tailoring, but America stumbled towards it.
This doesn’t justify slavery or make slaveholding virtuous. It simply recognizes that people are children of their times and have no choice but to live within them. Medical science of the same time proposed bleeding as a cure for many illnesses, and many good people were bled to death by loved ones who thought they were doing the right thing. Were such people cruelly immoral brutal murderers – or children of their times? Goodness knows what things that we innocently do now will cause our great-great grandchildren to ask “How could they do such things?”
Our founders were men trapped between the times, but their vision of liberty for all was -- and continues to be -- right, however imperfectly they themselves carried it out. And it is still that vision which makes America great and continues to draw people from all over the world to taste true freedom.