As we gather together as a country as much as we can in such perilous and fractured times to celebrate the lives of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms many of us take for granted, I was genuinely at a loss as to how I was going to approach this entry.
A couple of days ago, I overheard someone say that they were feeling rather embarrassed if not ashamed to be an American and that certainly has stuck with me ever since.
I can certainly understand the frustration as our government seems hell bent on enacting policies that would seem to be the complete opposite with the values our country has long been associated with through the years.
The country I remember for most of my life was the one you could count on being there for those who were downtrodden and oppressed and to respond to naked acts of aggression and conquest with the service of our brave men and women of our armed forces who would fight for justice and freedom for those who could not defend themselves.
Now our government seems to be getting all cozy with the dictators and the oppressors and telling our traditional allies that we’ve had for decades that they’re on their own now! Never mind that those allies came together in the only invocation of Article 5 in the history of the North Atlantic Treaty (an attack on one is an attack on all) and the beneficiary of that unified response to terrorist attacks was the United States after the fall of the Twin Towers and other targets on 9/11.
We were the country that could be counted on to come to the aid of those in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, even if they weren’t necessarily the most friendly to us prior to that disaster. Those grievances didn’t matter in the face of tsunamis or earthquakes or famines or rampant disease…what mattered was tending to and saving as many lives as we could and send ships and planes full of aid to help the victims survive and rebuild their lives after the disaster.
Our government has since shuttered the US Agency for International Development (USAID) which was by far the most successful source of American “soft power” that did much to negate the influence of China and Russia in vulnerable areas and increase our prestige and influence in the process and for a relatively minuscule investment of money for such a massive positive outcome for our foreign relations.
Their message seems to be “sucks that your life has been turned all upside down…good luck because you’re on your own!” And in so doing, they’ve opened the door for our adversaries to walk in and project their influence and power in places that used to look to America as the example of freedom and democracy and the friend that they could count on when the going got tough.
The House just passed a massive budget bill they’re trying to ram through using the budget reconciliation process which (among other things), sidesteps the filibuster in the Senate which was intended to allow the minority to not be run over roughshod. It doesn’t seem to matter that the vast majority of the bill is very unpopular with often 60% or more Americans opposed to many of its provisions but a largely unaccountable Congress seems likely to enact it into law anyway.
This budget is an absolute travesty that has so many provisions that are anti-American that one hardly knows where to start. It’s kind of hard to ignore the huge elephant in that legislation that intends to make massive cuts to lifeline programmes of healthcare (Medicaid and Medicare) and food (SNAP) from the most vulnerable in this country who have very little recourse to fight back against policies that at best marginalise them and at worst expect them to just die.
And for what? A massive tax cut (primarily by making the already massive giveaways to the rich in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent…tax cuts that 83% of the benefits went to the fantastically wealthy) for the richest people in this country who have already disproportionately benefited from the tax code at the expense of the vast majority of people.
One genuinely has to wonder if the brave men and women who gave their lives for this country as well as the ones who still stand on the walls to defend us would truly recognise what our country has become and how we’ve fallen from our perch as the society the rest of the world aspires to be rather than the increasingly authoritarian and autocratic one where the government seems to violate due process of law and the Constitution on a daily basis?
So there’s certainly an argument to be made that the policies of our current government are embarrassing and fly in the face of the values we at least used to hold dear. The ones that were enshrined in that amazingly resilient document first brought upon the Earth in 1787…
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
US Constitution — Preamble
Those first three words written far larger than the others and the words that follow encapsulate a view of government that is intended to be in service of the people rather than the other way round that was rather unique at the time of kings and emperors.
But whilst I can certainly understand and empathise with the notion that our current government’s policies and actions can be a source of embarrassment, the argument I made in response was that there was a very clear line I could never cross:
I will never be embarrassed to *BE* an American citizen and the country I’ve known and loved for all my life may have lost it’s way but it’s certainly not lost it’s place as a country I am proud to live in as a citizen.
I just can’t go there and not just because I grew up in a military family.
For all of the current government actions and policies I disagree with (and many of those vehemently so!), the bad actors who would wish to make us subjects of an authoritarian monarch haven’t yet dared get rid of the one document that gives not only me hope but was the foundational principles that those who have chosen to serve their country swore an oath and have fought to preserve, protect and defend and if need be, died in it’s defence.
The Constitution.
There has never been a governing document like it that says what it say in quite the way it says it.
There have certainly been some that have come close. Magna Carta, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and various other constitutions throughout the country and the world.
Right now, our country’s current crop of “leaders” may well have lost their way but as long as they’re not permitted to just chuck the Constitution in the bin, the dream that so many who fought and died to preserve the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution will not be extinguished.
We honour their sacrifice when we’re reminded that preserving the Constitution isn’t easy and it’s not for the weak at heart…it’s strong work requiring strong people willing to defend what is right and good against those who would do evil to our fellow citizens as well as our neighbours in the world.
There may be days where it seems like everything and everyone seems to be against that goal but that’s even more of a reason to stand up once again and fight for the heart and soul of the country we love and that we know is there but has just been misplaced for a while by those who value fear and being feared rather than the harder work of truth and justice which is the real American way.
To do otherwise would be to ignore and cheapen the sacrifices of those who came before us.
So no…there will always be times regardless of who holds and wields political power that I will find them using those instruments in ways that I find disagreeable if not deplorable and occasionally downright evil. And that certainly will be embarrassing and may well require atonement from those of us who remember the old ways of honour and justice and the given word being kept.
But embarrassed to be an American citizen?
Nem. Nem. SOHA!
No. No. NEVER!