"Red plus White plus Blue"
I get a little choked up when I sing the “Star
Spangled Banner” or “America the Beautiful.” Just humming along to the
music that was playing during the fireworks the other night was enough
to bring a tear to my eye. Not every U.S. citizen feels that way, of
course. Even some that do are ashamed to admit it.
Some say it’s all about conditioning. I grew up in small towns in the
American west, where the necks are as red as the stripes on the flag.
Both my grandfathers believed it was a duty—more than that, a moral
obligation or sacred trust—to vote. Assumed in that duty was another
obligation: to be otherwise civically engaged and remain informed
enough about happenings in the world so that your vote was always an
informed one. They didn’t understand how anyone could think it was all
right to say, “Oh, I don’t bother with politics.” A true-blue American
couldn’t be proud of being ignorant of world and national events. To
them, that was as bad as casually announcing at a dinner party that you
were a cannibal.
I admit that I was indoctrinated at an early age, but I think there’s
more to it than that. I remember, for instance, getting on a biography
kick for a while in late grade school. For a while I was reading any
biography I found in the library. As time went on, I became
particularly fascinated with biographies of the Founding Fathers or
other prominent people from the early history of the nation. I read the
Constitution and the Declaration of Independence—and tried to memorize
the latter. One of my first uses of the inter-library loan system was
to get a book about the Articles of Confederation.
The more I read about the history of how these founding documents came
to be, and the more I studied the documents themselves, the more
convinced I became that this “nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal” was worthy of being
proud of.
Yes, many of the principles in that Constitution have been around a
long time. Ancient Greece gave us the idea of voting in the fifth or
sixth century B.C.—though voting wasn’t used to select leaders, it was
used only to remove no more than one corrupt or incompetent politician
or official a year. Many other ideas were first expressed in documents
such as King Henry I’s Charter of Liberties, the Magna Carta (both the
one King John signed under duress then renounced; and the version
issued and adhered to by his son, Henry III), or Simon de Montfort’s
proclamation requiring commoners be included by election in parliament.
It was the particular combination of those ideas that was new. While Mr
Madison’s brilliant idea—competing sovereignties means more liberties,
not fewer—was unprecedented.
The ideas hadn’t always been implemented fairly or consistently. The
motives of both the people and the leaders have seldom been as pure as
the white stripes on the flag. Some of the ideas have had to be removed
as we became more enlightened. But usually the people have been trying
to live up to the ideals—at least as they were understood at the time.
While I have been quite disappointed in how far away from our ideals we
have lately allowed our leaders to take us, I was quite pleased to see
the reports of the survey that said a majority of the people think the
Founding Fathers would be disappointed.
Unfortunately, I have to admit that some of the people surveyed said
that for exactly the opposite reasons that I have said it. I only
recently was reading an article that quoted someone who was blaming the
bad things happening in the world right now on America’s acceptance of
gay rights. After making my usual sarcastic comment about what America
he was living in, I turned the page only to find a story about an
editorial writer who is blaming high gas prices on immigration—not
illegal immigration, but all immigration—and saying we have to stop
letting people move here. Apparently he things the teeming masses
yearning to be free should forget about it. After all, cheap gas is
much more important than liberty, right?
Despite all that, I still have faith in the potential for greatness in
that great experiment begun on July 4, 1776. We’ve fallen a bit, but
that doesn’t mean we can’t regain our footing and resume the climb
toward the gleaming heights. And I believe most of my fellow Americans,
of all colors and persuasions, want us to get back on the path to that
summit—even though we’re far from a consensus on exactly which path
will get us there.
So I’m going to keep on believing in that red, white, and blue. Just as
I’m going to keep insisting that a gay mostly-liberal man can be just
as patriotic as anyone. After all, if you mix red, white, and blue
together, you get lavender.
--Walt Kelly
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