The Beautiful

While I have been here I have been put in an odd (for me) position of feeling patriotic and defending my country to the world. I think it is easy, mostly because of the current administration's policies and tactics, for the world to belittle America, for our own citizens to feel ashamed and angry at the country. But I have never been one for the easy way out. I feel patriotic not because I support our current government, but because I believe in the principles on which our country was founded.

I love this exchange from the West Wing, and if you have a second (which I know you do, you are reading this blog right?), do it, pull out a dollar and look at it:

Jeff: You got a dollar?
Josh: Yeah.
Jeff: Take it out.
Jeff: Look at the back. The seal, the pyramid, it’s unfinished. With the eye of God looking over it. And the words "Annuit Coeptis." "He, God, Favors our Undertaking." The seal is meant to be unfinished, because this country’s meant to be unfinished. We’re meant to keep doing better. We’re meant to keep discussing and debating.
-The West Wing, "Six Meetings Befrore Lunch-

I believe our founding fathers were brilliant. They sat down and declared that we would no longer be subject to tyranny and we would strive for an ideal of justice and equality. They didn't say we would have it now, or in two hundred years, they said this is the ideal let us keep striving until it is obtained. They had the foresight to realize that they themselves had flaws, yes some had slaves, and most if not all were intolerant towards women, but they left us tools to change the institutions that were flawed without giving up the ideals set forth in their declaration.

My patriotism is drawn from the hope of a better world, and the knowledge that we are all capable of building what is not yet complete about our country and our world. Things are bad in the country? There is poverty? Injustice? Suffering? In our world too, you say? Yes, I agree, we all agree, now let us find solutions. I think there is a quest for the problem in our culture. A search to find what is wrong. Who will then continue on to the more difficult task and state with conviction, "Let us find a solution."? I don't know what has inspired me to say all of this. Just some thoughts that have been running through my head.

I believe in the inherent goodness of humans. And in the incredible potential for change, peace and prosperity of humanity.



This is from speech that President Bartlett makes on the The West Wing:

My great-grandfather’s great-grandfather was Dr. Josiah Bartlett, who was the New Hampshire delegate to the second Continental Congress, the one that sat in session in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776 and announced to the world that we were no longer subjects of King George III, but rather a self-governing people. We hold these truths to be self-evident, they said, that all men are created equal. Strange as it may seem, that was the first time in history that anyone had bothered to write that down. Decisions are made by those who show up. Class dismissed. Thank you, everyone. God bless you. And God bless America.

-The West Wing, "What Kind of Day Has it Been?"-