“Give me back my America!”
That cry has echoed all summer as the tea party mobs demonstrated outside and inside Congressional town hall meetings.
There are other slogans, other anthems concerning the America I would like to have returned to me.
Guess the slogan or anthem running through my mind and win the prize. Guess, but I'm not going to tell you. It wasn't, “ I want my America back!”
Woody Guthrie had a vision of America. It included all sorts of people from all walks of life. He sang about it whenever he could.
“This land is your land, this land is my land,
From California to the New York island.
From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land is made for you and me.”
Early colonists had their own vision of America.
Pennsylvania was creaed for Quakers, not welcome in other colonies. Massachusets was founded for Puritans, willing to exclude all other denominations and willing to kill anyone accused of witch craft.
Maryland was for Catholics who were not welcome in protestant colonies and not that welcome in Great Britain.
Do we want to return to an America which is noted for such a degree of religious intolerance that the different Christian sects can’t comfortably share a state? I don’t.
“ I want my America back!”
Of course you do.
Which America would that be? You’ve neglected to study the real history of the nation so you foucus in on bits and pieces that someone or something causes you to remember
You’ve neglected to truly study the Constitution except for those parts that agree with your personal bias and belief. You can cite the 2nd amendment, the 10th amendment, and that part of the 1st which you’ve come to believe allows you to shove your brand of proseletyzing Christianity in the face of your neighbors who believe differently. You know about the 2nd because the NRA sends you requests for money every week, telling you that “It doesn’t matter whether you own a shotgun used for waterfowl hunting or a AK-47 clone; you should be able to buy as many of either as you like and carry them openly to the theater, to church, or to the corner bar. And you know about the 2nd Amendment because there has been a constant stream of untrue rumors claiming that Obama is going to come for your guns next week.” He’s not, but the gun and ammo sellers are really cashing in on your fear.
You know about the 10th because you believe it gives you the right to not pay taxes for anything not defined as a federal power or right in that amendment.
So the America you think you want back, a heavily armed mob belonging to a theocracy, poorly financed; will be a collapsing nation of unemployed, sweat shop workers, illiterate, continually sufferering from water and food-borne diseases, with no national parks, no national forests, and no infrastructure. All those things are not defined as federal powers in the 10th and we all know how well the “free market” has done in making certain that food, drugs, and toys are safe before they are sold. We all know how well the “free market” has provided for its workers with safe places to work, vacation, sick pay, minimum wages, and health insurance.
“I want my America Back!”
Is that the America that the “States Rights” people still thunder about? Honestly, we settled the “states rights” matter in 1865. We just haven’t finalized the paperwork yet.
We no longer have separate water fountains, toilets, schools, and sections of public transportation for our black citizens. We never should have. But there are a lot of people out there who want to go back to that way of doing things. They rarely come out and state what they mean, but both “state’s rights,” and “I want my America back!” have a strong portion of racial and other hatred powering the cry.
We no longer need a hodge-podge school system that allows some localities to teach creationism and not teach confirmed science. We shouldn’t be dealing with small towns that refuse to allow the American Red Cross to sponsor and show a video about HIV/AIDS prevention to high school students because it might offend some fundamentalists who don’t want anyone, including their selves teaching their kids about sex.
We now need a national drivers license, national ID card, national educational curriculum. Other industrialized nations have come to grips with the fact that their smaller components should not secede from the nation. Well, Great Britain may have some smouldering discontent along those lines but most industrialized nations are striving for greater cohesiveness, not less.
Some people may want that America back, that America that rolled over and delivered to the GOP’s “Southern Policy, that America that elected Nixon, Reagan, and Bush II.
I don’t.
“I want my America back”
I want the America of Teddy Roosevelt, of newly minted national parks, of anti-trust legislation, of hope for universal health care, of the FDA.
I want the America of FDR, of regulations controlling some of the greed and corruption of financial houses and banks, the America of Rosie the Riveter, of the WPA, PWA, Social Security, The TVA, of the Manhattan Project, of VE day, of VJ day
I want the America of Harry Truman, of the Berlin Airlift, of the Marshall Plan, the America that recognized the state of Israel before any other nation, the America that desegregated its armed forces, that wanted universal health care for all citizens.
I want the America of Eisenhower, who built the Interstate system and gave us Project Mercury.
I want the America of JFK who took project Mercury and sent it to the Moon.
I want the Great Society and Civil Rights acts of LBJ
But I’m afraid that America, the one I want, the one that cares more about its citizens than it does corporations, no longer exists and can’t be resurrected. Fragments of it remain in the minds of my generation and some of our children. But the next generation grew up with the actor, Reagan, telling them how greed was good, government regulation bad. They should have noticed the lie of that whenthe S&L crisis hit and millions of people who had trusted financial houses learned, again, the lesson of 1929.
Still, the cry,”greed is good!” drove the mob, the housing bubble, the dotcom bubble, the “you name it” bubble while fewer and fewer earned more and more and more and more lost more and more jobs to outsourcing, offshoring, and the other tools of greed.
“I want my America back!” I want the one Woody sang about in this verse of his great anthem to America.
“As I went walking, I saw a sign,
On the sign was written, “NO Trespassing.
But on the other side, it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.!”
Our home backs up directly to the Cherokee National Forest, not that far from the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. We have a wonderful view of mountains, trees, wildlife of all sorts in any direction we choose to look. A small creek bisects our property and has a population of native trout to look at and to fish for.
We’ve got “our America”, we were very lucky to find it.
But “our America,” for the most part, ends where our driveway hits the public road. There are some people who vote and believe as we do in the region. For the most part, we are a minority and I doubt that will change. That’s who we are, that’s who they are, and most likely, if you’re reading this, you fall somewhere in between.
Please hang on to those bits of “your America” that you treasure. If I’ve reached the right audience, you won’t be trying to force “your America” on anyone else. So it is yours and ours that is most at risk. Not necessarily because we are outnumbered nation wide; but because we, collectively, have forgotten that we still need to put our bodies on the line for what we believe in. There’s no party this time. No girls wear suggestive t-shirts to entice the young men to join the cause. But there are still some newspapers to write letters to. It’s incredibly easy to annoy your elected officials if they appear to be in the other camp.
In fact, I’m going to end this and write another annoying letter to our local Congessman, Phil Roe, now.
Tonight’s dinner entre: oven baked gefilte salmon croquettes, fresh green vegetables in dilled yougurt.
(yes, I bought the gefilte salmon already prepared except for breading it.)
That young kid in the truck with an M-16 is me, paying for the privilege of voting and saying what I believe to be true without the government stopping me. That’s the part of the 1st amendment that lets me speak freely but does not give me the right to demand anyone else follow the tenents of my religious faith. The two principles are strongly entertwined and we need to remember that every time someone pushes a national, state, city, or local prayer for us all to take part in. It will always be their deity and never yours they want to appease or beg for favors.
MB, welcome to the circus. Hope you enjoy the side show!
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