The United States is a credal nation, a creed that we haven’t always lived up to, but what nation ever has? The creed of liberty is a high bar, a perfection that blemished human beings may never fully achieve. But it’s the striving that counts.
Liberty is not the sole possession of any one race, ethnicity, or gender. It’s a universal moral aspiration as shown by the waves of humanity risking life and limb to get here. The fact that our nation more than any other has a decent sense of liberty as its North Star welcomes all who wish to follow our laws in getting here. We are not a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of liberty-loving human beings.
We must remind ourselves that liberty is not license. Liberty without morals is like faith without works. It’s dead! Today, we run the risk of liberty becoming license, and the securing of the blessings of liberty is under assault by a noxious ideology that pits one group of Americans against another. We must resist this infection from the 19th and 20th centuries that undermines the blessings that have attracted millions. Americans beware of false mental idols that incite incessant group warfare. Every generation has its challenge. That’s today’s challenge.
God bless America.
I couldn’t settle on one rendition of Irving Berlin’s classic, originally composed in 1918. Here’s Kate Smith with a stirring performance from World War II.
RogerG