America Not a Melting Pot of Perfect People
To the Editor:
The bruised frame in which someone long ago mounted an 1863 photograph of President Abraham Lincoln rests against the legs of a side table where I first placed it months ago, not having found an appropriate wall space for my Second Chance resale find.
Lincoln’s expression is heavy and his sunken eyes dark and intense. He seems distant, as though unaware of the camera, or the appetite of its lens to record the burden of a terrible war. Words he will speak three days later at Gettysburg, will commemorate the bloody price of a noble cause, yet none of these words, nor their sum, say more about the man and the burden than the image of this captured moment.
If such a thing as an emotional autopsy exists, this photograph surely qualifies as one — a man worried and commissioned by his young country to perfect its purpose and carry its bleeding body forward to an uncertain destiny in the pursuit of a cause, unique in history, and for the proposition that in this nation all are free and equal before God, the law, and their fellow countrymen.
Fifty-six thousand seven hundred days have passed since that terrible war, and yet over a few handfuls of days, the tragic taking of two black men’s lives, has set the nation at war with itself once again — this awful shadow of slavery destined, it seems, to forever haunt the malevolent boundaries of its politics.
How can it be such a price was paid and no lessons learned? Or is it possible, or plausible, that lessons were learned, but their message subverted. The constant victimizing messaging shaming whites and angering blacks is a powerful accelerant for today’s racial fires. Policy that has changed little for the good leaves black tenants stanchioned into slumlord neighborhoods overrun with guns, drugs and gangs. Policing in these urban hotspots for black on black violence bedevils officers facing difficult choices.
But no problem, including this one, is too grievous to escape political opportunism. And so race issues seem to always become a cat-five messaging storm every election year. Militant measures to eliminate bias, however, go against the freedoms which define us. Crime will always be a part of a free society, as will prejudice on many levels.
In the 1840s, an Irish wave of immigrants faced little respect and ‘No Irish Need Apply’ notices posted to the front doors of most New York City businesses. The WOPs came in the dawn years of the Twentieth Century. The denigrating acronym stood for immigrants “with out papers” — most of whom were from Italy, Poland or Russia — and further defined the prejudice rampant in Protestant America’s northern cities against poor Catholic immigrants. Germans, came after the war.
Germans, came after the war. Jews, as well. Japanese were rounded up into barbed wire compounds. This country has had no shortage of opportune targets for ethnic abuse.
America is not a melting pot of perfect people. More than a nation, America is an idea: that all people, imperfect as we may be, can aspire to be better; that government does not bestow our rights as free human beings.
But we are also born selfish and demanding, and we can learn much worse. For many in America the lessons are becoming increasingly disturbing, as a Christian culture bends to the duplicity of our secular fondness for virtual sex and violence while we pretend we are not what we indulge. It is a duplicitous broth that is poisoning our beliefs.
At least 85% of us, however, still have enough common sense to know what we are watching is wrong by any standard — which raises an interesting political question. Why organize and promote all this? For what purpose, if so many voters are repulsed? Is this a ‘burn baby burn’ revolution in the making?
Our self-government doesn’t grow naturally. It’s a very special hybrid. Burning what’s worked is never better than enabling the power of the electorate to choose better solutions, or better leaders. Do we really want to turn Freddie the Constitution Shredder loose on a priceless masterpiece because we are enraged by an incident?
Ultimately we are who we choose to be — uneven, sharp edged, multi-ethnic and multi-racial — the grist of our ingenuity, inspiration, opportunity and freedom — for better or worse, rich or poor, forever bound to an idea — one union, preserved by Lincoln and the blood of half a million. To this we must ever pledge our troth, forsaking all else . . . including the political shaming which would have us believe we are too racist to be proud Americans.
Don Carpenter
Schulenburg