New Year's Reflections: America In Perspective

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USPolitics.einnews.com

January 1, 2008

January 1 always seems like so much more than just the next page on the calendar.

This day casts a strange spell on people, no matter who they are, no matter where they live. Millions stand elbow to elbow in frigid cold in New York's Time Square waiting for a ball to drop while counting down seconds to the new year. The streets of London literally freeze to a stop while revelers capture them in what amounts to a human stampede. The French stream into Paris to greet the new year at the Place de la Concorde where fireworks ignite right in the midst of the swarming humanity.

New Year's is part joy, part hope, part insanity. It's also part reflection. The media run obligatory summaries of what happened and who died in the year just past, along with forecasts of what the next calendar year will bring. Many of us do the same with our own lives. The New Year's resolution is as much a part of our tradition as the New Year's glass of champagne.

So as I write these words (while sipping champagne) please indulge a few private year-end reflections.

First I would like to reflect on how lucky and proud I am to be an American.

All four of my grandparents came to the U.S. through Ellis Island, just about the only place in the world where they could find refuge from deadly oppression. They didn't know English. They had few transferable skills. Their religion was a distinct minority in their new land. Yet their grandchildren include an economic Ph.D, a medical doctor, successful business people, a congressman, and others who never could have achieved so much in so short a time in most countries of the world, even today.

When we talk about human equality, the U.S. is the fountainhead. A humble birth does not imprint an indelible scarlet letter on anyone. Education is universal. And once you get educated or skilled, the market wants you to help build a business, or steer a government agency, or play a responsible role elsewhere in society.

We take this for granted as a birthright. But how rare a birthright this is in all of human history.

And how rare it is that such a powerful nation mutes its power before those who live inside its borders. When we sense any event that indicates that our government is infringing on our individual liberties our collective antennas spring up like some kind of common force field to resist the power of the state. Eleven generations into the founding of the U.S., freedom from oppressive government, even our own, is built into our common DNA.

We recognize oppression and we don't tolerate it.

Even rarer than our own insistence on individual freedom is the fact that such a powerful nation is essentially a benign one to others.

When our armies move they move to either protect our own sovereignty and interests or to defend others who've been threatened. We are not a nation set upon conquest or intimidation. Page back through the calendars of world history and you will find precious little precedent for such behavior on a national scale.

I'm proud of all of that. I'm proud of my country and what it stands for.

But being free, being open, being democratic doesn't mean we are flawless.

Bundle the nation's past record on slavery and enforced legal discrimination, its grudging acceptance of women as equals to men, its years of official oppression of working people in their fight for reasonable pay and working conditions, its periodic unfathomable foreign adventures such as Vietnam and Iraq----bundle all of that together and one can paint a graphically dark U.S. history.

We've learned through 232 years since the Declaration of Independence, however, this very important lesson: democracy is a self-correcting system. Majorities may make ugly decisions prompted by errant tradition or inflamed immediate passions, but given time and the opportunity to adjust to the consequences of those ugly decisions, collective wisdom will eventually gravitate to a more humane, sensible and durable course.

The day after George W. Bush was elected in 2004, the London Daily Mirror ran this headline: "How Can 59,054,087 People Be So Dumb?"

Three years later, more than two-thirds of U.S. voters desperately want him out of office. Despite all of the vast self-promotional efforts of the government in power, most Americans have concluded that Bush has steered the U.S. well off track from where they believe America should be. Most of us are appalled, embarrassed and personally anxious by many of the decisions he has made in our name.

George W. Bush's presidency isn't the only poor decision U.S. voters have made through our history. A head count of stupid and corrupt governors, senators, members of Congress and other officials we've elected through the years would fill an encyclopedia. Everyone makes mistakes, and American voters have made some real beauts.

America may commit wrongs. But as a people we know what's right. Most people in most countries also know what's right. We Americans just happen to live in a nation where we have the power to do something about it.

Joe Rothstein, editor of US Politics Today, is a former daily newspaper editor and long-time national political strategist based in Washington, D.C.

See all previous articles by Joe Rothstein here.