We see MAGA hats everywhere, especially on news stories about political events.
MAGA stands for Make America Great Again, and Donald Trump introduced the slogan when he was running for President in 2016.
When did America stop being great? When do the people who wear MAGA hats think America stopped being great?
When does Donald Trump think America stopped being great?
I've been wondering about that since 2016.
I'd argue, just as valid a question might be, "When was America ever great?" That's not me trying to poopoo America, it's an invitation to a deeper question. Because what needs to really be asked, what really needs answering is: what does one mean by "great"? What is greatness?
Is greatness defined by our liberal democracy? That, in a time when the great world powers were ruled by monarchs and autocrats, we tried the great experiment to create something new? That certainly is great, I think. Less great, however, is the lack of enfranchisement for a great many people. It has taken a long time for this nation to grant enfranchisement to all her citizens. Even, at the start, only property-owners could vote, and therefore grant their voice and consent to be governed. If you didn't have property, if you weren't white, and if you weren't a man, then you were effectively powerless. Then enfranchisement came to non property owners. And eventually slavery was abolished, though it took a grizzly and blood civil war to end it, and we enshrined the right of people (regardless of their skin color or race) to be enfranchised to participate in the democratic process. Though in some places, the will of a powerful majority was able to hold back many--a period of time we call Jim Crow. We then enfranchised women. And then Jim Crow began to be dismantled, we ended segregation, and many brave men and women suffered and were even killed in the name of seeking to achieve equity in this nation--a nation founded on the principle that all were created equal, endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So, yes, I would agree to the greatness of democracy, the greatness of liberty, the greatness of granting to individuals the protection of their liberty to be themselves without fear of retaliation, punishment, or torment by their government because of who they are, or what they believe, or what they say. That is a great thing. Less great is how, over our short national history, that very thing has been denied to many--usually because of who and what they are. For as long as this noble republic has existed, so has existed those who would seek power for themselves, and deprive it from others. So greatness has existed long, but weakened by the prejudice, evil, and autocratic tendencies of man.
It was not great for the millions of enslaved people, whose great and great-great-grandfathers and great-great-grandmothers were stolen from Africa, auctioned off to the highest bidders like they were less than cattle, and who were forced into perpetual forced servitude without rights, without protections, without any means of attaining even the tiniest glimmer of that noble dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; depriving not only themselves, but all their children, and children's children, and children's children's children--without end in sight; a spinning cogwheel of an evil machine going on without ceasing.
It was not great for the millions of indigenous peoples of this continent who were forced out of their ancestral lands, raped, murdered, enslaved, and in some cases entirely wiped out, allegedly all in the name of that very same noble dream. But a noble dream of a free republic for all people that commits genocide is hardly free. In the context of American history, it was called Manifest Destiny--and for a long time we even glorified it. Though it goes by a different name in the context of Germany history,
Libensraum.
It was great when the slaves were freed. It is not great that we had slavery in the first place.
It was great when we ended segregation. It is not great that we had segregation in the first place.
Greatness, rather than a period of historical glory we look back upon, ought to be a noble dream to pursue. Not that we have been great, but are no longer; but that there is a greatness to aspire to, a potential for greatness not yet realized. That enshrined in the words of the Declaration of Independence, that all human beings are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that We the People of the United States do, indeed, will to have a more perfect union, that the blessing of liberty might be on all of us, and all of our posterity.
Greatness is a goal to be sought, aspired to. If, indeed, greatness is to be defined by liberty, life, and the pursuit of happiness, not as provisional for some, but all by the inviolable and immutable fact that they are human beings, endowed by the Creator of all.
-CryptoLutheran