Saving America

It’s isn’t about Republican or Democrat.  It isn’t about liberal or conservative.  It isn’t about big business, terrorists, taxes, abortion, religion, gun control or gay marriage.  It isn’t about whose fault it is that we are where we are.  What it is about, at its deepest, most frightening level, what it must be about, is humanity.

This thriving of industry is not what made this country great, nor was it a rigorous adherence to any particular ideology.  We were not built on rigidity, but on compromise.  Bounty was once merely an incentive for innovation, for creativity and ideas that bettered the world.  Then, it was not the sole destination but a benefit which was gathered as we pressed onward into a bright and unknown future.  

As well, the Constitution was framed not for a people with a blind adherence to a single, unwavering philosophy, but rather with the thought that by listening to one another, with minds open and hearts willing to accept that another can be right without making all others wrong, that the best of us could be brought forth. 

But if there is a single, real tradition which has run beneath this country since its inception, which has bound us together and kept us aloft through some of the darkest times in human history, it is that, when those black days come, we band together, put aside petty arguments over small philosophies in light of the one greatest truth; in order to survive, to thrive, we must do so together.

For too long has our humanity been the excuse we’ve used to justify the inhumanity we’ve allowed in this country and in which, by doing so, we have all become complicit.  Humanity is not an excuse.  It is both an obligation and our salvation.  We must become more than what we are now.

As our country stands on the brink of real ruin, we hide from the world in petty pursuits and material things, hoping to insulate ourselves from having to deal with the problems around us which seem so insurmountable, to wait and hope that it goes away on its own, that someone else will fix them for us.  We bury ourselves in hopeless, pointless argument, blaming others, even ourselves, for the problems we’ve created, rather than enacting solutions because those solutions are difficult and require sacrifice. 

The time has come to accept, as a nation, responsibility for where we are because, even if we did not have a hand in shaping the grave issues which we face, we are all, to a one, responsible for allowing them to get to this point.  We must face the repercussions of our actions and those of others.  We have passed the point where finding the cause is as relevant as treating the illness. 

We must begin to think of others as much as ourselves, sometimes more.  We must overcome the fear of not having everything we want or need and accept that it will be so, at least for a while.  We must look past today, even tomorrow, to see what must be done to ensure that there will be a next year, a next decade, a next century.  It’s time that we became Americans again.

Americans who were willing, time and again, to risk fortune, belief, and their very lives to forge a greater nation.  Americans who were willing to offer to one another as much or more than they expected in return because they understood that we are made strongest by helping one another through difficult times.  Americans who believed that what we do or do not do today will have effects far beyond those which we can see.  Americans whose priorities lay in the freedom of expression, of information, and yes, of self, but only insofar as it did not encroach on the rights of others to the same

It is time that we grew up.  It is time we realized that being an American entitles you to nothing except the freedom to determine whether we succeed or fail.  It is time that we put aside our differences and our fears and took a hand in guiding this nation into the twenty-first century.  America is not over.  It may be sinking, but it has not sunk, will not sink as long as each of us, to a person, grabs a bucket, stands shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters, no matter who they may be, and does our share of the work to keep it from doing so. 

It is not about being a Republican or a Democrat, a liberal or a conservative.  It is about being a citizen of the greatest nation this world has ever known.  It’s about being an American.