Once
in this nation our leaders expressed the philosophy that when anyone anywhere
in the world wasn’t free than no one anywhere in the world was free. When Americans have fought their wars those
that the population has sustained at least in the twentieth century were those
that people believed were being fought to protect the freedom and liberty of
other people. World War I to secure
Democracy “Over There”; World War II to defeat the scourge of Nazism, fascism
and militarism; Korea, to save the peaceful people of South Korea from the
Communist hordes to their north; and the Gulf War to free the people of Kuwait
from the Iraqi madman Saddam Hussein. The 45 year struggle against Communism was
supported by most Americans of differing political persuasions because of a
common antipathy to the totalitarian nature of the “evil empire”.
But
today it seems that burdened with the Great Recession; the challenges to our
public education system, domestic violence and a culture war between those who
approve of the societal changes of the past generation and those who don’t,
Americans have retreated again into themselves.
Not only do we seem to care little about what goes on in other countries
in the world, we seem to care little about what goes on in other states and
counties and even communities - other than our own. And, it can be argued that many people care
little about what occurs even in their own neighborhood unless it directly
affects them. People don’t care if the
streets are kept clean unless the municipal street sweeper skips their
road.
In
Syria today a brutal fascist dictator, Al Assad, is terrorizing and massacring
his own people (especially the 80% who do not belong to his religious and
ethnic minority the Alawites). And, while Russia and China see this as a way to
return to the geopolitical power politics of the Cold War era the western
nations pontificate. In the 1990's it
took a courageous American president, Clinton, to rally Europe to end the war
in Bosnia but not until after the slaughter of thousands in Srebrenica. The ethnic cleansing in Rwanda was
ignored. And while the west aided the
rebels in Libya (whose democratic election has resulted in victory for
moderates) all the Syrian rebels seem to be worth are words. They may win on their own and if they do we
will see the self fulfilling prophecy of radical takeover of their revolution.
But
it is not just in foreign affairs that this new isolationism rears its
head. Here at home those without
children of school age now listen to the yahoos who would have us undo and
cripple the public school education system that helped build the great America
of the second half of the twentieth century.
And those who have no elderly relatives on Medicare or Social Security
listen to the shouting of the nihilists who proclaim that there will be nothing
left for them when it is their turn. The
rich who are rich because the government of this nation is free and its economy
is free complain that they pay too much in taxes although they pay the lowest
portion of their income since World War II (ended 67 years ago). The millions of Americans who have some form
of health insurance seem not to care about the 40 million who do not. Though
that 40 million has access to health services and the rest of the population
pay for that in higher premiums for their insurance they fall for the lies and
distortions of those who claim that Obamacare, a centrist moderate proposal to
get insurance in the hands of that 40 million, is socialized medicine.
Many
Americans now see themselves as under siege from some imaginary radical
left-wing cultural elite that seek to effeminize and corrupt the American
culture by importing “European ideas”.
Of course they don’t know what those ideas are and can’t explain them
because they pay almost no attention to what goes on in Europe or any other
continent. And if that weren’t enough their fear of the unknown has now sparked
a resurgence of the McCarthyism of the 1950's in the efforts by Bachmann and
other tea party radical right wing Republicans to demonize Muslim-Americans.
In
the twentieth century America became the leader of the world -- by 1990 the
only superpower and the symbol of liberty and justice for all. What are we now? We seem to have lost our way. We no longer
seem committed to building a tolerant, multi cultural, middle-class nation of
literate healthy young people whose parents and grandparents can live their
“golden years" in financial security and not be a “burden” on their
children. Instead we have become a
nation of homophobes - unless of course you know a gay or lesbian person and
then you support their right to choose their own lifestyle. We have become a nation of those who support
unlimited rights to gun ownership not just rifles needed for hunting or guns
for shooting at ranges. We have become intolerant of both the so-called
pro-life and the denominated pro-choice positions on abortion - unless of
course a family member or friend finds themselves with an unplanned or unwanted
pregnancy. We have become a nation that
believes that government is the problem and not one that saw the need for a
transcontinental railroad, and airports for aviation, and an interstate highway
system and so many programs sponsored by Presidents of both parties to help
people achieve the American dream. (Our people,
who don’t know their own history, forget that even the pioneers were able to go
west because the federal government sold the land to settlers' dirt cheap.)
So
what happens now in the twenty-first century?
Do Americans go back to caring about others in their country and their
world? Or, do we wait out the Great
Recession and when our economy returns to better times we bemoan what we have
let fall apart and try to renew and rebuild?
Or, do we become just a parody of what we once were - like the Roman
Empire in the 5th century or the Holy Roman Empire in the 18th (when it was
neither Holy, Roman nor an Empire)?
At
every time of crisis in our history since 1607 Americans have risen to the
occasion and been guided as Lincoln put it by the “better angels of our
nature”. So, it can be again! So, it
must be again! And how ever many bumps
in the road may cause us to land in a ditch we will pull this country out and
up and become again that shining city on a hill that the English religious dissidents
yearned for and Ronald Reagan resurrected as a national slogan.
27
July 2012
