If you're like me, you're tired of the mean-spirited rhetoric that fills the airwaves, campaign commercials, and print media these days.  To read and listen to the prevailing winds of our culture is to be inundated with what seems a never-ending litany of reasons to be disdainful of the United States.

     Don't misunderstand me; I'm not opposed to dispute and debate.  Reasoned discussion, even when it gets heated, nearly always produces a better outcome than me-too universalism and mindless-let's-all-just-get-along inaction.  It's not disagreement that's so fatiguing; it's the nastiness of it.

     Just for a moment, this holiday weekend, I thought it might be nice to remind ourselves of some of the reasons so many of us on both ends of the political spectrum still love this country.

Here come the American soldiers. You bet Europe has a beef with how long it took us to get "Over There!" Especially England, whose courage in the darkest days of WWII will stir souls so long as humans breathe; especially, also, Jews and gypsies and so many other subsets of humanity whose lives were snuffed out by unthinkable evil.  Yes, we've always had a hard time shaking our "live and let live" isolationism fast enough to realize people are dying while we dawdle, but when we finally overcame that national tunnel vision, evil itself shook with fear at our resolve. Elevator operators and cowboys fought shoulder to shoulder with lawyers and accountants, and their blood made more than just America free and safe.

Resisting the temptation to be Rome.  It was every dictator's evil dream and every free peoples' darkest terror: A weapon no one else possessed, a weapon so destructive no one could defend against it.  For the first time in history, somebody had that weapon.  Turning away from the urge to subjugate and conquer, an urge that marked nearly every era of human existence except that one, the United States instead reached out in reconciliation, even to its' most recent enemies. When we could have made the world cower, we did not. Instead we sent them food, as in-----

The Marshall Plan.  It may be one of our finest moments in history, even if revisionists now downplay its' importance.  Two generations of American soldiers lay buried on foreign soil, a terrible, heartbreaking sacrifice paid to push back the darkness which always seemed to hover over Europe in the twentieth century.  In between those two frenzies of evil, America suffered along with most of the rest of the world through a stunning Depression, breaking backs almost as often as it broke spirits.  So, history might well have forgiven the American people if they selfishly left Europe to its' own devices after the terrible destruction wrought by World Wars I & II.  Instead, we spent billions to help Europe help themselves stand up again. Anyone who "Googles" Deming or DeShazer knows we didn't forget Japan, either.

"We hold these truths."  It took us awhile to honor the deep and glorious humanity of such a bold declaration, and no thinking person believes we're finished yet. But it still must be noted that no nation in history ever thought to publicly record such a lofty standard at its' birth, at least until we did.  It takes great courage to pen words that immediately convict the author, but Jefferson and his fellow Americans did just that.  In a majestic and oft-times fumbling dance, even now played out in mind-numbing and frequently frustrating two-steps-forward-one-step-back rhythm, we still fight hard to find a way to not just speak that truth, but to be that truth.

"One small step for man." Countries blessed with great resources must bless others with vision and drama.  Pushing the edge of invention, testing the limits of our God-given talents in pursuit of what's just beyond our reach, is one of the most exciting ways to get us beyond self-serving greed and bickering. When we stepped on the moon, we did it as humans bonded by a home planet instead of a home country, and the world was never closer, if only for a flicker.

     Nowadays, every year's an election year; so the party out of power will likely always seek to make us discontent with the party in power, and they'll do so by pointing out just what's wrong with America.

     Every once in awhile, though, I hope we'll stop to remember just what's not wrong, and hasn't been since soldiers who couldn't even read the Constitution froze to death at Valley Forge so Madison could one day write it.

     God bless America!

     And every other freedom loving person or nation, too.

--Randy Kilgore

Randy@madetomatter.org