Opinion: A flawed nation’s strengths yet endure

Yet, at its best this Independence Day can be a day somewhat for taking stock, for trying to think a little about this nation and where it started and where it’s been and where it’s going.

A small thought to give you pause: when the Declaration of Independence was written, the 13 original colonies had a total population some hundreds of thousands fewer than the number of people now living in Georgia. Of course, that population of near two centuries ago included some extraordinary people, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, and a host of others.

There was seemingly political genius in the air in that young America 200 years ago. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution and the nation forged on the basis of such documents have endured. The ideas and ideals thus given substance have inspired people all over the world.

Why then, saying these things, do we say them under such a title? Why call it “This Flawed Nation”?

Because this nation, this society, was in some ways flawed in its beginnings and remains so today in the very nature of human imperfection.

Some of the very men who framed those basic documents of the United States and who talked best of freedom were themselves slaveholders. Some later presided over the rape and theft of land from American Indians and took part in treaties with Indian tribes seemingly signed only to be broken. Some held (and practiced) restrictive ideas about who should vote and participate in government that today would make the most hardened county commissioner blush.

Nor should anyone likely have great difficulty in making a current list of discontents in this nation: the mistakes of Vietnam, the sense of lawlessness and permissiveness (whether you put that in terms of Watergate or the fear of getting hit over the head on a downtown street), food costs and inflation, poverty, the instances of racial discrimination that still surface. Add others, the great general concerns about energy crisis, the environment, the future of American cities.

And yet ... and yet ... all these discontents exist in a nation that has succeeded in becoming the strongest and most prosperous society economically in the history of the world, one which at the same time offers the widest degree of individual freedom under law anywhere.

Racism? It exists yet. But, ponder this, the United States in less than 10 years, has managed utterly to change the patterns of racial segregation and discrimination that made Black Americans second class citizens. Inflation? Serious and unsolved, but less in this country than in any of the other large industrialized nations. Watergate? Crime in the streets? These are harder questions because they involved not only public matters but also the private sense of morality and honesty. At the least it can be said that the widespread concern about lawlessness, whether in the White House or in the streets, indicate that people care. That concern is likely to translate into both pressure for improvement in public ethics and support better law enforcement.

The flawed nation?

We stand by that title. But we stand by it in the sense that the American dream is alive and well. Americans are free to worship God however they choose, free to seek opportunity, to hold opinions, to battle government or differ with any “Establishment” we’ve ever been able to define and in instance after instance make for creative change.

There is not likely ever to be a perfect society on this green earth. But the genius of the American nation survives on this Fourth of July. It includes not only hopes and dreams but a political structure of stability, with a strong economy, yet with a commitment to the protection of individual liberties and the chance for change and improvement, hopefully in the direction of the best the American vision can offer.

The Editorial Board.