I love America

I really do. I don't always like it, it usually disappoints me, and more often than not in my adult life I have disliked the current administration, but I love the country. It's broken in many ways, arrogant, often inconsiderate, and has more institutions in need of repair than I can list, but it's also one of the greatest of human experiments.

We started with some great notions:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that 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.

We screwed up our pursuit of these truths on many occasions in the past, and all too often we still do, but we've ultimately always chased them.

Many have paid for our belief in them, including my stepfather, Edmund Livingston, Jr., who carried shrapnel from WWII for as long as he lived.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Ed was an ordinary man, one of many like him, who lied about his age so he could fight for his country. He paid for his courage with scars you could see and scars you couldn't, and a stupid bureaucracy denied him a second Purple Heart he earned and deserved, but I never saw him bitter about his service. He knew his war was a noble cause.

My friend, Dave, went to Viet Nam, a war he knew was stupid and one he opposed, because it was a citizen's duty. He, too, was one of many who did the same, and he, too, carries the scars to this day.

Citizens have paid for America, and I'm grateful to them.

The flag, which we'll see a lot today, though only a symbol, means something to me. I won't mistreat it. I will ardently protect the right of those who want to burn it or do anything else with it, because I believe in free speech, but I won't do those things myself.

And the rockets' red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.

I think of these lines every Fourth of July, as we set off our fireworks and our own play bombs burst in the air.

I question my government all the time. I often, as now, despise it and think it stupid and wrong. I've spent most of my voting life on the losing end of elections, and I've rarely encountered a politician who seemed to me to have much of a soul left.

But I vote every chance I get, proud to have the opportunity, grateful to those who secured it for me, and loving my country.

A damn fine speech

WARNING: I generally avoid politics in public forums and even at parties where I don't know the guests well. Stop reading now if you don't want a glimpse of my political feelings.

If you read on, you've been warned.

Yesterday, Barack Obama delivered an amazing speech in Philadelphia. Even if you saw it, I encourage you to read it, which you can do here. As a writer, someone who loves words, I am incredibly impressed. In this address, Obama confronted multiple serious issues, he refused to back down from facing the problems and conflicts some see in his relationship with his former pastor, and he treated us like adults. At the end, he even managed to be genuinely inspirational.

I consider Lincoln's writings to be the best of all I've read of the works of American presidents--a reading I must hasten to add is nowhere near complete. Lincoln was simply a superb writer.

Obama, who from the few reports I've seen did the first and final drafts of this speech, is positively Lincolnesque in this work.

On a more personal note, when the father who gave me my last name--not my birth father, but still the man I knew as my father--died when I was ten years old, I went to work mowing lawns so I could help out my family. It took me five hours to mow, rake, and edge a lawn. My clients paid me $2.50. Minimum wage at the time was $1.60 per hour. I've worked ever since. I've been broke, not anywhere near as poor as many but certainly not well off, and now I live well, better than I had any right ever to expect. America gave me the chance to create this better life.

I teared up at the end of Obama's speech, because I want my America to be one in which hard work gets you ahead; in which none of the stupid, superficial stuff--the color of your skin or the way you worship or the gender of your sexual partners--affects your chances; in which we strive together to lift up all of us; in which we use the might and the greatness of this most powerful of nations to confront the huge, frightening problems facing us--and overcome them.

God, how much I want that country.

I don't believe Obama--or any single candidate--can deliver it. I believe we can be that country only if the vast majority of us decide we want to be it and are willing to work long and hard to create it.

I am, though, coming to believe, against all my cynicism about political candidates, against the wisdom of my experience of repeated disappointment at the behavior of our country's leaders, that maybe, just maybe, Obama genuinely shares my desire and can inspire others to do the same. Wouldn't that be wonderful?