Remember Who We Are

                I grew up in the best country on earth. 

                The seeds of its greatness were sown in the philosophies of the wisest Greek thinkers, the culmination of all their shared ideals.  I lived in a place where everyone was welcome, everyone was equal, everyone was treated fairly, and everyone had the right to say their piece without fear of repercussion.

                It was the eighties.  I learned the sanitized, My Little Pony version of American history.  In it, the benevolent Christopher Columbus discovered our wonderful land.  The people living here already were savages, so they didn’t count.  And anyway, they needed us to rescue them from their Godless existence and their ways, because they were doing everything wrong. 

                As a child, I believed in the goodness of this country.  Our founders had a vision.  Yes, their vision was tainted by prevailing belief systems and traditions of the time.  It didn’t include women, dark-skinned people, and the so-called “Godless,” but somehow in their wisdom they didn’t make a point of excluding them, either.  They knew times would change and their words may one day require reinterpretation.  They had the capacity to conceive of a completely different world then the one in which they dwelled.  A world that was better.

                As I grew up, and my image of the United States grew tarnished, I’ve still held onto a childish faith that we are the greatest country in existence.  It’s the people that inhabit it that are flawed and imperfect.  Our nation strives to be greater than the small minds that live here.  It always has.

                I still have faith that ultimately the foundation upon which this country was built will prove strong enough to resist fascism.  That like St. Peter’s rock, it cannot be broken; it is misguided people who will ultimately break themselves upon it.

                These are trying times.  Only through trying times can a country grow stronger.

                Regard the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, still standing sentinel in New York Harbor:

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

                That is what this country stands for, who we are, what we represent to the rest of the world.  We have always embraced those desperate to escape the horror of their lives beneath the iron fists of punishing regimes, countries that are the antithesis of the US.  Our ideals shine brighter than us. 

                We have never been perfect.  Yes, we are racist.   We’re working on it.  We are also a sexist society.  But bit by bit, women are gaining ground in the fight toward equality.  We have our problems, but this is a country that strives to embody the ideals upon which it was founded.

                We can never forget that the United States believes that everyone is born with unalienable rights: the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Everyone.  Not just United States citizens, or black people, or white people, or men, or Christians, everyone.  The United States has always been the only nation in the world that has recognized these inborn rights and sought to provide them not only to their inhabitants, but to everyone else, too.

                We must hold onto our ideals.  Otherwise, everything we have fought for is meaningless.

                Our country struggles to fulfill a vision of perfection conceived many centuries ago by some of the greatest minds that have ever lived.  Yes, we are faltering, as we’ve faltered many times before, but we must remember why we are here, why the United States exists, and we cannot stop striving to become the ideal dreamed of by our founders.  We can’t give up the fight. 

                Remember who we are.