America: The Goodness That Greatness Begot
“Cultures are held together by the stories they tell about themselves, and America is struggling to find a new national story, one that can acknowledge past injustices without becoming defined by them. The old all-or-nothing morality tale of Good America has too often been superseded by an all-or-nothing morality tale of Evil America, which proclaims that every apparently positive accomplishment disguises a sadistic reality.”
Richard Rorty, among the most preeminent of late, 20th century left-wing intellectuals called upon his fellow travelers to stop criticizing their country. He advised
National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement…. [J]ust as too little self-respect makes it difficult for a person to display moral courage, so insufficient national pride makes energetic and effective debate about national policy unlikely … Such deliberation will probably not occur unless pride outweighs shame.
Clearly, today’s progressive woke left wants no part of Rorty’s nostrums. America’s radical critics take no pride in their country and see her capitalist ethos as worthy of shame and guilt, certainly not pride. To the woke activists, American culture is filled with racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, hate speech, rape culture, minority voter suppression and rampant police brutality. The critics look out and see not millions of individuals striving to better their conditions, but so many targeted and exploited ethnic, racial, economic and gendered minority groups tied together by oppressive bonds of “intersectionality.” (READ MORE from Jerome Huyler: Leaders Lie When They Lose the Narrative)
Above all, woke activists decry the corrosive effects of capitalism on the social fabric. No longer do people come together or care for one another, so they say. In the space once occupied by the “common good,” they bear witness to a dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest, look-out-for-#1″ wasteland marred by toxic masculinity and white supremacy. As Robert Reich, a former Commerce Secretary and long-time critic, concluded, “This is not a society, it’s not even a civilization, because there’s no civility at its core.”
The radicals seek, above all, to elicit guilt, shame and remorse from the general public. The man or woman who lacks pride and carries a burden of guilt for his (or his country’s) actions is intellectually disarmed and unable to proudly defend himself (or his country). He will not be able to push back against a withering criticism, however lacking in merit it is.
The left agrees with Marx: “the ruling ideas of any epoch are merely the ideas of the ruling class.” Oppressor and oppressed, that is all the country’s detractors can see. They say America’s democratic ideology is nothing more than a slick trick to justify injustice and pacify a gullible populace. In a land allegedly devoted to “liberty and justice for all,” critical race theory (CRT) “exposes” the rampant violation of black people’s rights.
Americans … are the most generous and caring people to ever people the planet.
You’ve heard of “fake news.” This is fraudulent cultural criticism on a mind-numbing scale. No, it isn’t wrong to point out how the nation’s founding principles were compromised and violated from the start. The past was a brutal and cruel place filled with injustice. What the critics fail to notice is (1) how historically unprecedented the founders invocation of equality was, (2) the remarkable progress the country has made in realizing the dream of equality and (3) that it was precisely that dream, proclaimed over and over by courageous Civil Rights and Women’s Rights leaders, that made progress toward real equality possible. (READ MORE: The Limited Government We Don’t Have)
Martin Luther King had a dream, “that one day this nation would live out the meaning of its creed, that all men are created equal.” All he asked is for America to fulfill its founding ideals. And, after launching the women’s rights movement at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton also recalled Jefferson’s July 4th Declaration, demanding: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. ” Yes, it took far too long to achieve the equality that was proclaimed in 1776 and no doubt there are still racists among us – haters will hate. But it was the nation’s first principles that accompanied every mile post of progress the country passed on her journey to fulfill those noblest of all ideals — Liberty and Equality. Thankfully, the major battles are behind, us.
Democracy has not only taught the Americans how to use liberty without abusing it, and how to secure equality; it has also taught them fraternity . . . [T]here is in the United States a sort of kindliness, a sense of human fellowship, a recognition of the duty of mutual help owed by man to man, stronger than anywhere in the Old World and certainly stronger than in the upper or middle classes of England, France of Germany.
Americans today form or join associations for every imaginable purpose under heaven. There are trade associations, labor unions, fraternal orders, service societies, veterans organizations, self-help groups, medical societies, alumni unions, campus sororities and fraternities, think tanks, animal rescue groups, and gun, fan and auto clubs, to name a few. Leisure and ample disposable income made it all possible.
But the largest association of all, the one to which Americans belongs, is the free market, itself. While it is most often associated with the fierce competition it fosters, it is really a vast cooperative endeavor allowing millions of voluntary, mutually rewarding deals to be struck daily. Only equality of opportunity could never guarantee equality of result. All were not equally inquisitive, talented, or fixated on self-advancement. The laissez faire economy guaranteed an eventual inequality in the distribution of wealth. For the founders that posed no moral difficulty. Jefferson expressed it best,
To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and [possession of] the fruits acquired by it.
There is something else about the “selfishness” Americans practice. It leaves millions with the financial means to contribute to public-spirited projects or just partake of charitable good works. Why not share one’s good fortune with those who have less and are in need? That amounts to no great sacrifice. (READ MORE: So Much Thanks to Give as Americans)
A nation is as great as it is free. Prosperity is the material expression of a nation’s greatness, and a free people’s greatest practical reward. Rooted in the freedom it affords individuals to strive and succeed, that greatness continues to furnish a great deal of goodness. Between 1956 and 2010, the annual Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon for Muscular Dystrophy invited the world’s greatest talents to perform for millions of TV viewers. More than $2 trillion was raised to help “Jerry’s Kids.” To this day, Danny Thomas’ St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital saves the lives of disease-stricken children while assuring their grateful parents, “don’t worry, we won’t send you a bill.” For more details see The Almanac of American Philanthropy over 1,300 pages listing the foundations and institutions devoted to doing good works all across America and throughout the world. Americans, the freest and most prosperous, are the most generous and caring people to ever people the planet. Tell that to the next woke radical you see.
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