When Ben Friedman’s article, “America still the greatest,” ran last Friday, it was met with a pretty poor reception. If you’ve picked up the paper since then, you’ve no doubt picked up on his historical inaccuracies and perhaps over-simplified view of America’s standing in the world.
To me, the interesting aspect of this CW spectacle isn’t that so many people responded negatively to his article – the last week or so has seen the opinions section blossom with debate and criticism and, most significantly, dialogue. The fact that The Crimson White serves as a forum for such valuable discourse is a testament to how essential it is for this campus, and for me is one of the most enjoyable aspects of being a reader.
The interesting thing about the responses I’ve seen, or maybe the thing that bothered me, is that while everyone corrected Friedman’s historical fallacies, nobody agreed with him that America is, in fact, great.
I’m not talking about our heroism in WWII – as Neil Adams and Ross Owens outlined in their responses, America’s self-interest was a much more significant motive for our participation in that conflict than was altruism. I’m also not talking about our involvement in the Middle East, because quite frankly I don’t think either of those examples are adequate representations of America’s greatness.
When we go to war, we (should) do it out of necessity – the loss of any human lives, American or otherwise, is not something to rejoice over, and is certainly not something to take pride in.
Combating terrorism is a noble cause, and one that I, like most Americans, support. But I also question the ways we have chosen to go about doing that. I know better than to believe our involvement in countries like Iraq have clear, purely benevolent motives – and many Americans would agree with me there as well.
So why were all of the responses to Friedman’s article so lacking in patriotism? Has it really become awkward to say, “America’s pretty cool,” instead of participating in the further discrediting of our country?
In Wednesday’s paper, one comment by David DeMedicis on the opinions page was very telling: “Nobody likes the d-bag (America) that brags about how awesome he is all the time. I mean, would you like that guy if you weren’t him?”
In Friedman’s America, this comment is both accurate and fair. In my America, it isn’t.
To keep from being too biased, I will admit that DeMedicis makes an interesting point in encouraging us to re-examine how we carry ourselves as Americans. There are a considerable number of people with whom we share this planet who do hate us. Why doesn’t this bother us?
I posit that it is not because we’re d-bags, but because the people who hate us are automatically written off as terrorists, and not as common people with valid human claims.
This is a problem, and with Americans combating this ignorance, it will eventually be addressed. The resistance of those who can’t stand to be corrected is the only obstacle to this progress.
This illustrates an aspect of how American freedom functions that I believe to be redeemable – that we do have unethical corporations, that we do have condemnable foreign policy at times, that we do have severe social inequality, but all of these problems are dealt with, usually by ordinary American citizens who have the passion to devote themselves to an injustice that they have witnessed and cannot ignore.
So, to humor DeMedicis’s mental exercise, if we were not American, what would we find likable about America? What is great about this country?
This country is great because people like Autherine Lucy were able to take courage and ultimately defeat the evils of segregation. This country is great because people like Noam Chomsky write books criticizing our treatment of other countries in order to make us take another look at ourselves. This country is great because people like Frederick Douglass edit newspapers, people like Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong go to the moon and people like Dorothy Parker write poetry.
We cure diseases, we open restaurants, we innovate, we make music, we do research. Common people do these things and a host of others in the U.S. Our opportunities, our achievements, our creativity, our people – these are American triumphs, and they are worthy of respect and esteem.
Our problem is that we leave patriotism to people who evidently don’t understand what there is to be patriotic about. When Sarah Palin and Christina Aguilera are the only ones stepping up to the plate, it’s no wonder America looks so goofy.
As an American, as someone who is proud to be here and would not choose to be anywhere else (even though I know that people do not, in fact, starve universally in other countries), I encourage the lot of you reading this to figure out why you’re here instead of someplace else, and what you have to give. Our greatness doesn’t lie in our overseas exploits – it lies solely in what you are willing to contribute to this country, as a common person, as an individual. That is where our nation’s victories have and always will come from, and that is what causes me to take pride in being American.
Marina Roberts is a freshman majoring in anthropology.
