Make America great again: The slogan that killed a dream. A nation died while we searched for a moment, the moment when America was her greatest.
Was America greatest when the troops of George Washington crossed
the Delaware River and won a victory that energized her revolution? Patriots would
have it so.
Was America greatest when her Supreme Court issued the Dred
Scott decision which stated that African slaves and their descendants were not
considered citizens of the United States and therefore could not sue in federal
court, essentially declaring that enslaved people had no legal rights to
protection under the Constitution? Our current administration thinks it so,
wishing to apply it now to the country’s first inhabitants.
Many Americans now think greatness occurred sometime in the 1950s.
That is when income tax rates were near their highest, and
- when citizens were being slain in the South for
aspiring to vote,
- when our children faced a life in iron lungs as
a result of polio,
- when
women couldn’t obtain credit on their own,
- when young men faced the military draft to go
unwillingly into undeclared and unmotivated wars,
- when veterans who had fought for America in WWII
and in Korea faced denial of the GI Bill of Rights due to the color of their
skin,
- when drafty, leaky, shabby, and unsafe houses
were good enough for some, and
- when education in America existed on a binary system of quality.
Moments are difficult to pinpoint. Defining them requires
thought, bravery, and compassion. America was at her greatest when these
factors came into play, long ago in a country far away.
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