Do You Hate America?

Wednesday was the 4th of July, Independence Day here in the United States. My daughter Randie wondered what was the big deal. What exactly is there to celebrate? 

I've sought to make the case that we celebrate the founding of a country based on an ideal, of freedom and equality. No, we have not lived up to that ideal. Even the men who signed a document that proclaimed that all men are created equal did not live up to the piety of their words. 

But over the past two centuries plus, we have tried to live up to those ideals. As a nation we have struggled, we have shed blood in the pursuit of those ideals. Often we have faltered. But often we have fought onward towards a reality that is closer to those ideals than we when we first began.  

Randie's a smart girl and has looked beyond the spoon fed pablum of American history as taught in public schools. She knows too well of the black marks that mar the history of the United States, our poor treatment of women, of black people, of Native Americans, of homosexuals. The list of our transgressions is so long. 

And maybe, just maybe, if she could see that this list of our transgressions was truly in the past, maybe she could learn to accept this country, maybe even if love it. 

But she looks around her and all she can see if that the list of our transgressions is ever so much still with us. There is an entire structure of political power arrayed to turn back the rights of women, of people of color, of different sexual and gender orientations.  

How can she love a country that is actively engaged to hurt her and her friends? 


Brit Hume of Fox "News" posted on Twitter that Democrats don't love America.  This was in response to a poll that showed a lot of Democrats are not proud of their country right now. Hume later deleted the tweet.  


This is not an uncommon tactic for political extremism to counter that their political foes do not love this country, that they hate America.


How often did I hear some pinhead say Barack Obama hated America? This constant demonization of the political left has fractured this country. How can we get anything done in Washington when the message is constantly sold over and over that the people on the other side of the aisle hate America?


But can we really blame some people if they do. Every single damn day, we see continual actions to tear down the gains we have made to live up to the American ideal. Push backs on the rights of women, diminishment of people of color, hostility towards the gay community.


Yes, American has a history that is scarred and blood stained with those we have wronged. But we were moving forward, making the ideals expressed on the founding of our nation more a reality. 


We were. Now we're not.


Do you hate America?


I really hope not. Yes, you can be disappointed in America and there is much to be disappointed by. Too many people succumbed to messages of fear and opted to follow an ignorant demagogue with easy answers.  Yes, be disappointed by that.


But the ideals of this nation, the ones that gave birth to this nation in 1776, these ideals are not dead, not yet. The concept of a country where people are free to live and pursue their dreams, the ideal of that country is alive in the voices of those who speak out against the repression and regression of our current government leaders. It is still alive for those outside our country who still look to us as an example that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is possible and their fervent hope we will find our way once more. 


America is lost in the dark, a darkness born of fear, rage and ignorance. I am not happy about that. I am very disappointed by that.


But I still do not hate America. 


President Obama used to say there is nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America. 


Yes, we have our flaws. We have our transgressions.




But the dreams and the ideals of a better way are not yet dead. There is still hope.