In the days before the primary election on Feb. 5, Progressive Nashville takes a look at where America stands on some important issues and, on Friday, where we should be going.
Today we look at values.
What are America's values? They are the ideas that define our way of life. Among them are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness;freedom of speech, religion and assembly; freedom from unreasonable searches; the right to a fair trial and to confront our accusers.
Our values come from our history: the arrival of our ancestors on the shores of this country; our response to acts of war whether they came from British battleships, Japanese bombers or terrorist-piloted airplanes; our survival of catastrophes such as the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression or the flooding of New Orleans.
America is not just the promise of opportunity, but it is the belief that any one of us can succeed if we have the talent and desire to do it. That belief is based on the American values of fairness, equality and justice.
Our values as a country do not come from our churches, our families or our jobs. Those elements, and many others, define our personal values. But our freedom to hold those individual beliefs is an American value.
America has always struggled to reconcile its values with its laws and actions. Our Constitution, ratified in 1788, spoke to a quality of justice and fairness, but devalued black Americans. It took nearly 200 years for legal equality to arrive in the form of Brown vs. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
America has granted extra protections to children because of their vulnerability while also deciding that children should not have the same civil rights as adults.
The legal and governmental expression of American values will change as society changes. A Progressive idea -- allowing two people of the same gender to marry -- was considered impossible 20 years ago, but now several states have made it part of their law. A conservative view that America could invade another country simply because it might pose a threat was once thought unthinkable, but it has now become part of the national doctrine.
The question of where America's values are now will largely depend upon one's point of view. For Progressives, America is moving in the wrong direction. Wealth is being concentrated in too few hands, government is more accountable to special interests than to the people and too little attention is being paid to creating a society designed to promote "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Many conservatives may well feel the same way as they see their party taken over by those more concerned with religious doctrine than the traditional principles of small government, small budgets and policies based on tried and true techniques.
The values we adopt as individuals and as a country will change and evolve and we must constantly wrestle with those changes so that our ideals are preserved.
As Mark Twain wrote:
Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
- Jim Grinstead
See also:
The Idea That Is America, Ann-Marie Slaughter
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