America was Already Great

America was already great. We didn't need to be made great again. We are great in our people who contribute to food banks or help the people in their neighborhoods or on the street corner; in our people who work each day to keep society running well; and in our people who are not able to work (whether through disability or not finding employment they were educated or trained for), but who contribute at home through their love, and who sometimes bring a smile to others or lift a heart, all of whom are of great worth; and in our people who come from other countries and offer the work of their hands or minds to enrich us. We were already great.

 

 America was never perfect. In our past, we have devastated the Japanese by dropping bombs on their cities; we have abused the Chinese by rioting against them for being here, after they worked hard and risked their lives to build our railroads for us; we took the land from the people who lived here when we first came and have treated them unfairly ever since; we have brought slaves and, once we freed them, never, as a nation as a whole, quite treated them with equal respect. We have always had plenty of room to grow and become "greater".

 

 But in the past four years, we have - it might seem - become less great in some ways. We seem to have become less great as we separated children from their parents with no way to keep track of them and reunite them; as we sent troops to clear a peaceful protest for a presidential photo op; as we have sent federal troops in unidentified uniforms to quell protests by picking up people walking down the street, with no charges, and putting them into unmarked vans; and as we have reinstated the death penalty at the federal level after 17 years and even while we learn of all the people who have been falsely incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. I'm puzzled at the idea that America is any greater. 

 

 But we are still great as a people. We still, individually and in many groups, help others. We still do our work every day, whatever it may be, or if we are not able to work, we still love and are loved by our families. There will always be sin and there will always be sorrow. We can fight some - not all of that, but certainly some - and mostly we can fight it by our personal good works and by striving to be a nation that is greater in its care for all...from helping and protecting the mother who is expecting a precious child to helping and protecting, as much as is in our power, the elderly, the sick, and the dying.