I just spent one uncomfortable post-surgical night trying to find something decent to listen to on the radio. All I could find to listen to were people who could find no moral difference between the U. S. and Al Queda.
More than I have ever seen in my life, it seems that spokespeople from government and intellegentia see our country as an entity with no intrinsic moral purpose. The conflicts we find ourselves in seem to matter no more to the commentators on the radio than where the line is drawn down the middle of a bedroom shared by two selfish brothers.
Islam, the religion of peace, and Christianity apparently enjoy moral equivalence, but Judaism seems to have slipped further back in the pack as a respected religion, somewhere behind the animism that is the philosophical underpinning of the green movement. Every channel I heard, every article I read last night was no more than starkly cynical.
This is not the truth about the United States of America.
The fact is, this nation has been a unique and successful attempt for mankind to be its best.
This nation was built like a pyramid with one strong intellectual or moral value stacked on top of another.
This nation was born of the great idea that educated, free people could rule themselves. The ideas, which began with the great Greeks and Latin thinkers, were enriched by the teachings of Jesus Christ, who taught us that we are created in God's image and were charged to love our neighbors as ourselves. The Judaic God of the Word and Law allowed our thinkers to look for patterns in the universe. Science was born. Science working with the nobility of human life gave us the practice of scientific medicine and the ability to improve agriculture and manufacturing. Ideas were leading to longer lives with increased meaning. Beautiful art expressed belief in symetry and reason.
Reading the words of the founders, we are always struck by how generous they were. The shame of slavery contrasted severely with the rest of the noble ideas our ancestors had, and eventually we conquered that shame.
George Washington is not thought of as a great hero today to many people, but he is one to me. He threw away a kingship to set the course for the future where all men would become equal.
No country's founding is perfect. However, I believe this nation's founding is the noblest undertaking in the history of the world. It wasn't just the Presbyterians for the Presbyterians. Our founders stretched their hearts and minds to their very limits in the pursuit of the idea that given freedom, education and the chance to work hard, the human species could rise not to the lamentable lust for power and wealth for its own sake, but for the beautiful idea that individuals and families could select meaningful lives in the service of others or in making new and better ways to live, socially and in agriculture and in the life of the mind. The common man would not be so common any more.
It is so degrading to see our forefathers' great struggle for achievement spit upon for its shortcomings. Truly great shifts in moral thought stretched us and grew us and through great struggle and growth, we have become better people, generous to our neighbors foreign and domestic.
Our moral struggles do continue, but without the understanding of the suffering and sacrifice made by individuals for the uniquely great ideas that founded our country there is little chance for great strides in the future like the ones we have accomplished in the past.
This is Memorial Day. Toward the end of the Civil War, my grandfather's father sat by the sides of sick and dying soldiers and helped them write letters home. In his own writings, he noted how moved he had been that idealism for a better world drove simple farmers to suffer and die so that even more people could enjoy the fruits of freedom.
I heard one Baghdad chieftain's words to my son, as he translated the arabic words under a photo of this man's beautiful brown-eyed children. "These are my boys--I hope they grow up like you."
We are the good guys. The bodies lying under the crosses and stars across the vast veterans' cemeteries stand for a long, vigorous line of men and women and their families who lived and died for the greatest idea in history--that given freedom, people will do good things with it.
Honor the dead today by studying, truly trying to understand, the great ideas our loved ones have sacrificed their lives to perpetuate.
Our country is a new thing--a good thing. Study what that is, as it may be our world's one and only chance for greatness.