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American Greatness: Can We Redeem Ourselves?
“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” — Alexis de Tocqueville
This quote grabbed my attention because I realized that I may no longer agree with any of it. I know that Tocqueville is admired and celebrated, but I wonder if he could have foreseen what would happen to this country so many years later.
I do think in some ways we are, or at least were, an enlightened country. To me, enlightenment is not a steady state, but a process, and compared to the rest of the world, we were head and shoulders above the rest. We were known for our honoring freedom and opportunity; many who dreamt of coming to this country believed our streets were paved with gold. No other country could offer a life where a person could succeed through hard work and persistence.
Yet I wonder if we can assert that we are the country that can “repair her faults.” We have fallen low, into the depths, and there seems to be little opportunity to find our way forward, make amends, and create new prospects for growth. We are languishing in the muck together, and there seems to be no one to pull us out and help us free ourselves to make a better future.
Or maybe—just maybe—we can take Toqueville at his word. We can trust that we have the resilience not to just pull ourselves out, but to help each other free ourselves to discover new possibilities. We can realize that this will not be a job just for individuals, but for people joining together and to start mending the cracks in the foundation of our country. It will be slow and arduous, but we can do it.
Together.
Published in Group Writing
Just read this from the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks:
Don’t wait to be praised: praise others
Don’t wait to be respected: respect others
Don’t stand on the sidelines, criticizing others
Do something yourself to make things better.
Don’t wait for the world to change: begin the process yourself,
and then win others to the cause. . .
‘Be the change you seek in the world.’ Take the initiative.
Up until a few years ago I thought transphobia was an irrational fear of trains, planes and automobiles.
Whoda thunk??
The issue is that the majority of America does not view redemption as we do here. Their version is Reparations, an assortment of minority rights that are not equality but superiority and tearing down of the current system to be replaced with significant different one.
That’s the problem. The together part. It’s not going to happen.
It may not happen in government. But I think our society may be ready to join together. As someone mentioned, we see it with parents in the schools, and organizations forming to support them. Then we can begin to vote for people who are willing to do the hard work–actually represent us. I refuse to give up hope.
I still have hope. But your statement above is nothing new. It sounds like the Tea Party of 2010. Even though we got a big Republican wave in Congress it meant nothing. The media demonized the Tea Party, remember? Some real scoundrels got in and proceeded to do nothing.
And then look what they did with Donald Trump. Look at the Republican ‘leaders’ in power. Incrementalism doesn’t work, especially when we have so many frauds pretending to represent us. There has to be radical change. I just want to accept the reality. The first thing we must do throw out the trash who have betrayed us. Every last one of them. Then we must end the media’s influence, which is a monumental task.
Monumental? You mean, ending the influence of an industry that enjoys lower than 25 percent approval among the public?
Nah, that’s already done.
@franco, I didn’t say it’d be easy!! ;-)
I’m just not so sure how likely the radical change you describe will be. But I would love to see them happen!
Actually, I blame Mitch McConnell for a good part of the Tea Party’s demise. As well as the TP not always picking good candidates.
As if the Tea Party had been an organized group, rather than a reaction to the incompetence.
Susan :”Can we redeem ourselves? “
I think that is the question many in America are asking. It is really the question of the day; of this time.
I think we still can but the question is not a question of can we, but will we? Do we have the will to redeem America?
The problem is that we have allowed powerful interests in our society – the unelected bureaucracy, the Corporate World and our self anointed Priestly caste of lawyers and judges to transform our Republic into a functioning aristocracy where they have the vast majority of government power and have as a result taken for themselves most of economic benefits.
We should be ruled by our Constitution, but since Marbury vs Madison, our self anointed Priestly caste of Lawyers, all the way up to what is not an illegitimate Supreme Court, have expanded upon the idea of interpreting the Constitution into a wholesale revision of the Constitution from a document designed to limit the abuse of government and to grant distinct god given inalienable rights to all our citizens into something that essentially wholly contradicts the original intent of that document and grants vast powers to certain select privileged interest groups to be abused without any sort of checks and balances to their hearts content.
To redeem America, Americans
• Need to squarely confront the idea that much of our government has been taken away from us
• Must penny and without hesitation confront those powerful interests, like our bureaucracy, America’s Corporate interests and our self anointed Priestly caste of Lawyers that stolen our rights to self governance from us.
In short, we need to return to a viewpoint of Constitutional Interpretation that relies on a “strict construction” interpretation of the Constitution where the document means what it says and not what our ruling elites believe it aught to say.
The education system will be a very difficult, if not impossible, slog. We are divided by people who almost want to be victims and those who disdain victim hood.
We have the ability, but do we have the desire?
The ability to repair our faults lies in our election system. If things are broken, we can elect people who will fix them. However, our current election system is broken, and our half of the country has lost faith in it (aside: the other half did in 2016). Attempts to fix the system in several states have been fought tooth and nail by the left. They clearly don’t have the desire to fix our faults; they introduced the faults in the first place and want to add more. The more broken the system is, the more they can rig the results.
It’s up to us to maintain the desire to fix our faults, and this requires the determination to fight as well as politicians who’ll do the same. Trump was a fighter, but the 45 House Republicans who quit didn’t have the stomach to fight along side him. I wouldn’t mind a Trump/DeSantis ticket in 2024 . . .
I like the point, but parents are pretty well aware of the problem now and taking it into their own hands. That’s part of why I say the whole thing is already in motion.
In order to repair faults one must first identify them. This requires keen eye and we do not have one. Next up you need a steely resolve which is not going to appear unless the body politic is in agreement and that is not the case.
Our internal critics believe we are the worst and that we’ve always been this way. You can’t repair something that is innately flawed and that is how people are being taught to see the United States.
Susan, what are the faults with America that cause you concern? Do you have any solutions?
Alexis de Tocqueville’s vision of the United States of America died in 1860. We are in the last days of the Republic, the next stage is a brutal civil war fought by Oligarchs followed by the Imperium. The decline of the Puritan Empire is irreversible, but the empty symbolism and public liturgical nature of an impotent representative Republic will remain to confuse and comfort the weak-minded plebeians.
“Our” military is better at scheduling sex reassignment surgery than it is moving troops and materiel.
Well, yeehaaa!
I’m afraid that, unfortunately, the numbers are considerably greater than 1%. Based on what I’m hearing from people of a broad range of types (professions, geographies, etc), I’d estimate that at least 10% are devoutly ‘woke’. And there is another 20-30% (at least) who have adopted ‘woke’ coloring for reasons of social and professional acceptability, much as they would have made sure to be visible church members in 1962.
You think more of people than I do. Parents will go back to work and send their children back to the indoctrination centers.
That is its new purpose. Being a emotional support system to minorities.
Somewhat related: My Labor Day post, which addresses the question of whether or not the United States will be able to maintain its historically-premium standard of living for the majority of the population. Link.
Sheesh. That’s not good.
I can’t help but think filling the military with people who wanted a way to get money for college gave us a better product than filling it full of people who want a way to get cheap alt genitals.
We cannot fix our country as currently constituted. Washington, (Meaning the apparatus and interests who have giant influence on it) isn’t fixable without time and our enemies wont allow us the time. Washington interests cannot be fixed except by being eliminated. The US was unique. All that’s happening is we’re evolving into what every country in history was, top down governance, but we’re so grossly bureaucratic, so rich and so big that it’ll be a slow enough death that, were it not for our enemies ( mostly China) we might fix it, Trump was working in the right direction, thats why he was stopped. We could fix it if we separated enough states but too few would support such a radical departure because they think we’ll win back power by elections. Biden is so obviously inept and dysfunctional its possible but we wont know until it may be too late.
People have bet against he United States before. They have always been wrong.
It is the one hope I hang on to.