The Wonder of America
I posted this story ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/the-week-america-abandoned-its-soul-d62f00b1369f ) last week and felt great sorrow doing so. As a U.N. staffer I traveled around the world and had the opportunity to engage in conversations with other U.N. staffers at duty stations on all seven contintents.
Sadly, because I was an American conversations often turned to issues non-Americans had with the U.S.A. I say “sadly” only because it made me sad to see the great misunderstanding many, who are not American, have with those of us who, proudly, are.
Mostly, I found, people who are not American think Americans are arrogant, selfish, self-centered and, generally, excuse me, a pain in the ass. Luckily those views are held in the abstract and my personal relationships with all of my colleagues and locals in other countries, where I worked, were generally cordial, courteous and friendly. However, I must add that I always worked, through word and deed, to dispel incorrect sterotypes of the U.S. while explaining how proud I was to be an American.
For all these reasons it was especially hard to post the story “The Week America Abandoned its Soul”. I felt very much like the tearful lady Liberty below because I know what it’s like to be among those who don’t know the wonder of America.
During one of my assignments with the U.N. I was out for dinner with colleagues in Addis Ababa Ethiopia and while engaged in a conversation with a colleague from Nigeria I mistakenly used the phrase “ dignity of individual”. I was immediately rebuked for using that phrase and told the problem with Americans is our complete disregard for “the community” and it is the community that is of greatest importance, not individual members. Individuals need to understand their responsibility to the community, my colleague forcefully explained. It was obvious I, all-be-it unintentionally, touched a nerve in my colleague’s sensitivities regardng individual rights and community responsibility, which for me, at the time at least, was quite shocking.
Since that very revealing conversation I’ve come to learn that many throughout the world do not share the American understanding of individual rights and liberties as declared by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence:
“ all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
As Americans we believe it is government’s (the community’s) responsibility to secure the rights of individual human beings and that the government/community derives it’s powers from the consent of the governed. In America, at least, individuals do not derive any rights or powers from the government.
No one describes what it means to be an American better than The United States’ first female Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, when she writes:
“America at its best is a place where people from a multitude of backgrounds work together to safeguard the rights and enrich the lives of all. That’s the example we have always aspired to set and the model people around the world hunger to see.” — Madeleine Albright
We must all work to wipe the tears from Lady Liberty. We must all work to overcome the nastiness that is Donald trump and sadly what is becoming the nastiness of the Republican party. We must all work to regain America’s soul. It exists in the wonder that is America. It exists in the wonder that Ronald Reagan, former leader of what was the Grand Old Party, described as “the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill”
