“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ….”
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Nice words. The country has hardly ever lived up to those sentiments and never lived up to them fully. The Constitution itself, especially the first constitution, the one implemented before the Reconstruction Amendments, the one that reactionaries keep trying to enforce, is a terrible document. No one sane would build a government using it as a template — and in fact, when trying to setup other democracies, the State Department does not use our government as a template. And, of course, it is a deeply sexist, racist, and implicitly classist document.
But.
My mother is Polish. Most of the family on my father’s side came from England or Germany. If you believe my Great Grandmother, some of the rest were Native American. In each case, if the United Sates had not existed, I, to the extent that I would exist, would be expected to pledge my allegiance to the dirt that I was born upon for no other reason that it was the dirt I was born upon. The United States is different. It might be unique in that — a nation that is theoretically built upon allegiance to ideas not dirt.
This is potentially a vast improvement. Allegiance to dirt just leads you to hating the people standing on other dirt. It is not entirely conductive to peace and goodwill. The ideals embedded in the founding documents of the US are a superior basis for allegiance. Basing nationality on ideas rather than location, rather than genetics, is an improvement. Making the price of citizenship allegiance to an idea means that everyone is a potential citizen, a potential fellow traveler.
And while the ideals are not perfect, they can and have been perfectible. And while most of the history of the country has been of those in power ignoring those ideals, they have had the tendency to pop up at inconvenient times to annoy those self-same power brokers. The United States is open to anyone and improvable. That is something of value, something worth having in the world, for all its faults.
To my US readers, enjoy the barbeques and try not to blow your hands off.