What are the core American values?
What is the American dream?
Those are the questions I want to explore in this blog. I'm asking these questions because this past summer I got involved in the political process for the first time, and I was thinking that I could work within our governmental system to help make life better for my community. The United States, as the world's greatest political power and a beacon of light and hope guiding democracies around the world, has the great responsibility and privilege to use that power to make things better for people here and around the world - for farmers in North Carolina and India, businessmen in New York and Hong Kong, and children everywhere.
"Making things better" is a broad and elusive goal that can be approached in myriad different ways. The answer to increased well being may be to keep government hands out of people's wallets. It may be to look out for the widow and the orphan when no one else well - being a sort of prophetic voice for a church grown sluggish. It may be to intervene in human rights conflicts or to work to stop the proliferation of weapons around the world. Even when we can agree on goals, we can disagree on strategies and downright oppose one another on tactics. The beautiful thing is that we don't have to agree on everything! That is why our constitution developed a way for us to come together to discuss issues and find the best solution as a group.
But I got involved with government work because I believe that there was something that unites us all as Americans - from the Christian leftist to the moderate Muslim to the conservative atheist. I was convinced that certain ideals inspired us and certain values encouraged us and that by working to communicate our policy proposals in light of those ideals, we could come together to find which proposals would work best in the real world.
Unfortunately, that is not remotely what I found in the midst of our political system. Instead, I found Democrats so desperate to be reelected that they abandoned any underlying principles. I found Republicans willing to use hate speech and fear tactics and happy to throw their supporters' interests out of the window, all to defeat incumbents they didn't like. I found an entire system so beholden to corporate interests that if any bill did not support the top 2% of Americans, it could not pass, even if it were wonderful for the other 98%.
It's a nasty system, and despite all the values-driven rhetoric out there, I found very few people who seemed to believe in the values they expressed. Values were used as a ploy to increase approval ratings - not to inspire Americans to live up to their ideals.
So! I've decided to start this blog - my first ever - to start a conversation about values. What are the values that unite us? Can they bring a fractured nation together? Can they bring us to our senses before we lose our status on the world stage...or even the very soul of our nation?
I'm going to be posting my own musings about what I see as the core American values - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - and I'd like you to respond to those musings, not with anger or vitriol, but with your own take about how your conceptions of these same values inspire you. What do you agree with in what I say? Where am I totally wrong? What insights do you take from posts that could help advance our nation's conversations about important issues?
I'm doing this blog because I have hope in our nation. We are the greatest nation in the world, and I believe we can become even greater. Our differences should not keep us from talking, but rather should allow us the opportunity to open a discussion. In fact, our great diversity should allow the best possible solution to arise through the conversation - if only we can have that conversation without yelling or walking out of the room!
Some of you may be thinking this sounds like some hopey-changey, pie-in-the-sky dreaming. In one way, I mean it to be exactly the opposite! I believe that IDEAS have POWER. Only by having candid, respectful conversation can these ideas be given body. To have a conversation, though, we have to speak the same language. I believe that finding common values to which we can relate provides us with that common language, and from that language can emerge a pragmatic conversation. If we don't find that common language and start a conversation soon, our country may be in some serious trouble.
On the other hand, I think dreaming is a wonderful thing. It was dreams of a better life that led the Pilgrims across the Atlantic. It was dreams of freedom that led soldiers from the Revolution to Iraq to risk their lives for this country and its values. It was a dream that led Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders to claim the American promise that had been withheld from them for hundreds of years. It is this grand tradition of American dreaming that I want to pick up and build upon.
We don't have to think alike to dream alike, and we don't have to be the same to work together for the country we love.
Let's prove that Americans are not hopelessly divided.
Let's prove that real conversations can lead to real solutions.
Let's prove that the American dream is alive and well!
