The Long Clasp

Part I — Greatness

Some folks think that America was Great at some time in the past, that it no longer is, and that we should do something to make it great again. Other folks think that that is nonsense, that America has always been great and still is. Still others think that America has never been great, at least not for them, and that we should do something about it. It seems we ALL want America to be Great, which seems like a promising starting point for discussion. But however you look at it, there are a couple of things to work out. For example, what do we mean by “Great”?
            Are we talking about the land?  Because that really is great.  Beautiful. Abundant. Varied.

But we didn’t have anything to do with that. It came that way. God or Nature made it that way. The humans who lived here for thousands of years before Europeans stumbled ashore fully appreciated its beauty and its bounty. The Spaniards who explored and settled it before the Anglos ever set sail appreciated it in their way. And so has everyone who has followed. So how does the land make America great?
            Certainly, one could complain that what we have done to the land since the Europeans arrived has degraded its beauty, diminished its bounty—if not yet in toto, at least in variety.  There might be something in that: Let’s All Make the Land Great Again!
            Maybe we’re talking about the good old days when a real man could deal with his own problems himself.  If someone was bothering you, you could just slug him in the nose and be done with it.  Or if someone actually did something to you, stole something or slugged you in the nose, you could put a slug into him and ride off into the sunset.
            Or maybe it’s the other good old days when we were the last man standing after the Good War.  Europe was in literal shambles, we had brought the Hun to his knees and then eradicated the Yellow Peril, and all other nations looked to America for guidance.  Democracy was a­borning in India and Israel.  And even though the Devil shape-shifted as the most evil threat to world peace and prosperity, spreading his insidious, communistic tentacles wherever he could, there was little doubt that we would cast him once again into the Pit.  It felt good to be looked up to.  Safe and Secure and Great!  I even happily remember the childhood game of Duck-and-Cover under the classroom desks, the nuclear fire drill.
            How about “America”?  Do we mean Central America?  South America?  Latin?  North?  Rhetorical questions really.  Everyone knows what we mean—the United States of America!  The rest of it doesn’t count, at least not in this context.  We have subconsciously appropriated the entire hemisphere as our own^[1]. Let’s dial the rhetoric back a bit and hereafter refer to the USA.
            But what do we even mean by the USA?  It is no longer geographically limited to the continental 48.  Alaska and Hawaii are actual States.  Puerto Rico, Guam, and Samoa are “possessions”.  And of course all that has changed through the years, and well may change in future.  So not geo­graphy.
            Was the USA Great before it was the United States?  That’s a kind of circular question, because if it wasn’t the USA, even if it was great it wasn’t the USA that was great.  And if it wasn’t great, it really doesn’t matter because it wasn’t the USA.
            And yet we all know some of the stories of those days that make our collective bosom swell with pride: the plucky Pilgrims; John Smith keeping his cool while the pretty Pocahontas pleaded that he keep his head; the righteous dissenters who wouldn’t compromise their God-ordained morals, back in the day when there were real witches to hunt; the undaunted persistence of survivors to carry on after repeated sufferings of climate or savagery; and finally, of course, the in-your-eye repudiation of oppressive, unjust, and interfering treatment by a far-distant central government.  Up to that time there were only neighboring Colonies, not States of any sort.  And yet we look back with a pride of connection to people who held such values, dared to stay their oppressor’s hand, and broke with—seceded from—the existing governmental structure to shape their own way of doing things.
            All this feels good and right, and surely it is part of what makes us feel Great.  Today the USA is the military Behemoth of the world, but back then those freedom fighters had only a slingshot with which to face the Great Goliath of Britain.
            But face him they did, while at the same time taking up the unimaginable challenge of constructing a brand-new social governance before the Country should devolve into anarchy or worse.  It took seven years; but with a lot of well-regulated slingshots and a few other tricks, they made Goliath go away.  That was definitely Great!
            However, it became clear to them that the governmental structure they had designed didn’t work so well.  Basically, too many cooks in the kitchen and no way to decide on the menu.  So things couldn’t get done that government needed to do.  Back then—long before health care or welfare or school prayer or job-killing regulation—government was thought to have practical purpose that required decision and action.  So a chosen group from twelve of the thirteen States—all men, all white, some owning slaves, some not—convened and constituted a new form of government.  New not just to the young country calling itself the United States of America, but new to the known history of the world.
            And thus was born the USA as we have been taught to understand it.  A country exceptional in world history for the ideas enshrined in its defining documents.  Ideas truly Great in their humanity.  A country truly Great in its aspiration to realize those ideas in the lives of its people.  A Constitution truly Great in its incisive, practical formulation to withstand or overcome the ever present threats to that aspiration.