America has gifted itself with a fundamental crisis. I say ‘gifted’ because every so often we need to realize how easy the dreams of our nation’s founders can be lost. And we need to choose again who we as a nation want to be.
The crisis has been long growing but in 2016 has come to a head. We are at a defining, make that a re-defining moment. Who are we as a people? Who is the ‘we’ in “we the people?” Do we suffer from national narcissism? Is fear of the stranger our mutual motivation? Are we a nation of racial, gender, and class privilege? Or does everyone enjoy basic inalienable rights? Is the U.S. Constitution living DNA. Or is it a dead document, fossilized for all time as if the social realities of 1776 remain unchanged to this day?
Our times are complicated. Try as we might, we can no longer hold the world at bay and hide behind walls. Social and economic forces scramble us together. New technologies profoundly change long standing-habits of social interaction. Clearly we are offered alternative views of America’s future. One person’s American Dream is another person’s American nightmare. We have devolved into an us against them bunker mentality. When a nations citizens see each other as “the enemy’ we become a house divided against itself. Without common values we cannot have a commonwealth.
On this Independence Day, take time to carefully consider both what we are liberated from and what are we liberated for.