By Edwin Cooney
As Americans prepare to celebrate their 240th Fourth of July as a free and independent nation, America’s “greatness” is being infused into our quadrennial presidential campaign. One of our candidates promises “to make America great again.” That assumes that one president can, or ever has, made America great! The main problem with Mr. Trump’s hope is that it is both subjective and intangible! It’s like beauty which, as everyone knows, is in the eye of the beholder. How does one evaluate what it takes to be a “great” nation. I was a Republican back in the 1960s when we used to scoff at Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society.” Thus, it is likely, although not assured, that Republicans will heartily endorse Mr. Trump’s “Great America” pledge as they heartily scorned LBJ’s “Great Society” proclamation. However, to dismiss America’s greatness as merely political symbolism is, I think, too arrogant and quarrelsome to go unchallenged.
When the thirteen colonies published America’s birth certificate in the form of The Declaration of Independence on Thursday, July 4th, 1776, they created a government unlike that of any nation on earth. Under its structure, the Articles of Confederation, the thirteen new states agreed to support a new central government whose first obligation was to win the war for independence even though those new states in great part failed to keep their promises to the Continental Congress — and to General Washington, the tall aristocratic Virginian who rode a horse like few other men and who braved death as British Musket balls occasionally tore holes in his coat. Still, he muddled through to become “father” of a new nation. That new nation, structurally unlike any other country and thus a political and social experiment, turned out to be valued as a “great” nation. Ah! but that greatness was only declarable after over 50 years of its existence. Not until the 1830s did the great French journalist de Tocqueville more or less testify to the world as to America’s greatness.
It is both natural and gratifying to believe that one’s homeland is “greater” than any other nation. Most of us were instructed as we grew up that America was greater in wealth, power and genuine human goodness than any nation ever conceived. If perfection could only be found in Heaven, America’s well-intentioned generosity amounted to the highest degree of goodness that could be measured and thus appreciated here on earth. These words uttered by the “Great Commoner” William Jennings Bryan stir me even today as I assert that American greatness is largely an individual evaluation. Bryan, the three time Democratic presidential nominee and pacifist Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, made this proclamation:
“…Behold a republic gradually but surely, becoming the supreme moral factor in the progress of the world and the accepted arbiter of the world’s disputes…a republic whose history, like the path of the just, is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
Mr. Bryan’s Christian pacifism would be overwhelmed by “The Guns of August” of 1914. However, Bryan’s brand of Christian morality remains in some small corners of humankind’s awareness a prescription of human greatness, American style.
Of course, American history is bedecked with laws, customs, trends and choices that fall far short of greatness, as do the histories of every other nation on earth. Nonetheless, our history is also enriched by the deeds of great men and women. However, just as America’s greatness was only gradually recognized, it is obvious to this observer that the greatness of nations can only be effectively awarded by future generations.
Throughout the1950s under presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy, a time when many of today’s proclaimers of American greatness were growing up, there was considerable uncertainty as to America’s future. Although America led two great alliances, NATO and SEATO, and assisted in bringing Germany, Italy, and Japan, our World War II enemies, back into prosperity and respectability, Americans felt far from secure. They still had to endure the “cold war” struggle with the Soviets, and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. Jim Crow ruled the South, and there was the ever present fear of nuclear obliteration. We certainly can be forgiven if we look back on the mid fifties and early 60s as a time of American greatness, but no one who lived through that period experienced much comfort in the face of external threats and internal bigotry.
Thus, promises by Mr. Trump or even Mrs. Clinton to make America great again may be well intentioned as well as politically expedient, but it is vitally important to remember that the path to greatness is full of hazards rather than instant gratification. Mr. Trump’s assurance that if he is elected, America will “win” so often in our struggles with other nations that we’ll be bored with winning is absurd!
American greatness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. American greatness is a personal not a national evaluation! Whether or not America is great is not up to either Trump or Clinton. American greatness is ultimately up to you and to me. However, there is an even more vital factor in the measurement of America’s greatness.
Of course, America is our home and thus beckons us to her bosom. The children of other nations are also so beckoned. Hence, the ultimate test of American greatness is invariably a verdict of humankind. Individually we can be forgiven, and perhaps we should be encouraged to make America great, but the realization of American greatness is ultimately not up to us.
To hope that America is great is indeed noble. To declare America “great” for political renown is arrogantly ignoble and as such is both unAmerican and unpatriotic!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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